UK: Population growing by 216,000 a year
September 1st 2012
New figures show that the Government is still nowhere near achieving its goal of cutting net migration to the “tens of thousands” by 2015. A separate report by the Office for National Statistics shows that the foreign-born population of Britain has increased by 43.5 per cent since Eastern European countries joined the EU in 2004, to reach 7.5 million. Ministers insisted that their immigration reforms are starting to have an effect. Damian Green, the Immigration Minister, said: “We are now starting to see the real difference our tough policies are making, with an overall fall in net migration and the number of visas issued at its lowest since 2005.
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But Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migration Watch UK, a pressure group, said: “These figures are a disappointment. Net migration remains far too high. Today’s numbers underline the huge difficulty of getting immigration back under control after 13 years of chaos.” Sarah Mulley of the Institute for Public Policy Research think-tank added: “The combination of recession and immigration policy changes may be starting to have an impact but more than a third of the fall is due to a rise in emigration. “The statistics show that the Government remains a long way from its goal.”
Read the entire article: The Telegraph
More on this issue: Why population matters
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