UK Immigration News

The next set of official UK immigration statistics are likely to show an increase of more than 25% in the number of Romanians and Bulgarians living in the UK since the same time last year, according to the Migration Observatory at Oxford University.

Dr Carlos Villas-Silva, a senior research at the Migration Observatory, said 'It is almost certain that we are going to see an increase in that number from the first quarter in 2013 to the first quarter in 2014," he said. "We would expect at least 30,000 more… that would be the minimum you would expect.

A leading London think tank claims that 30% of the UK's population will be made up of people from ethnic minorities by 2050. In England, by far the most populous country in the UK, that figure will rise to 50%.

A new report from the Policy Exchange think tank; A Portrait of Modern Britain, containsanalysis and projections byProfessor Philip Rees of the University of Leeds from census data.

The UK would 'fall apart' if all immigrants currently living in the country decided to leave tomorrow, according to a well-respected London think-tank.

Tim Finch, associate director of migration at the Institute for Public Policy Research, a left-of-centre London think tank, told internet magazine Vice that 'there'd be large gaps in the workforce' which would be 'disastrous'.

The Conservative Party, the largest party in the UK parliament and the senior partner in the UK's Coalition government, fears that the release of immigration figures could adversely affect its electoral prospects at the European elections to be held on May 22nd.

It has emerged that the next set of UK immigration figures will be published by the UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS) on 22nd May, the day of the elections to the European Parliament.

The maverick mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has called on the UK government to grant an immigration amnesty to all illegal immigrants who have been in the country for ten years.

Mr Johnson said 'The alternative is to continue in a situation in which half a million people or maybe 750,000 people in Britain, most of them in London, not registered, with no papers, contributing to the London economy, making money, but not paying tax'.

The UK's Home Office, the government department responsible for immigration matters, has admitted that a computerised immigration checking system which has cost at least £500m to develop doesn't work.

Last month, a senior immigration official said that the program, known as e-Borders, had been 'terminated' in its original form. The scope and scale of the project has been limited and it has been renamed the Border System Programme.