Immigration pushed up Britain’s population by more than 200,000 during Labour’s last year in power, an official count showed yesterday. The figure approaches the biggest leaps during the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown years and is more than double the immigration level Coalition ministers are aiming for.
In the 12 months to the end of March, 580,000 people moved to Britain, including a record 211,000 students. In the same period 364,000 left the country – the lowest level in a decade.
Net migration to the UK rose to 215,000 in the year to March. That has resulted in a rise in the population of up to 215,000. This net migration count underlines the huge task facing the Government if it is to keep the figure below 100,000. The totals for 2008 and 2009 were 163,000 and 198,000 respectively.
The Office for National Statistics has said that the population will hit 70million by 2029 if net migration runs at 180,000 a year. The ONS, which published the figures, said emigration may have fallen because young Britons had struggled to find jobs in recession-hit countries.
The ONS breakdown revealed that the fastest-growing group of immigrants are students. The 211,000 figure for 2010 compares with 175,000 in 2008 and only around 100,000 in 2001.
Migrationwatch said non-EU citizens accounted for the bulk of immigration. Sir Andrew Green, the pressure group’s chairman, added: ‘These new figures confirm the massive impact that immigration is having on our population. This fully justifies the Government’s efforts to get our immigration system under control – a policy that the public overwhelmingly support.’
Immigration minister Damian Green said: ‘These statistics once again show why we must tighten our immigration system in order to reduce net migration to manageable levels. ‘We aim to reduce net migration from the hundreds of thousands, back down to the tens of thousands by taking action on all routes into the UK.
‘The annual limit that we announced this week will ensure we continue to attract the brightest and the best while we reduce economic migration.
‘We will shortly be launching a consultation on student visas, so as with economic migration we refocus on the areas which add the greatest value and where evidence of abuse is limited, protecting our world class universities.’
Home Office ministers this week announced a 21,700 cap on visas for workers from outside Europe.
The number of student visas issued by the Home Office has been running much higher than the ONS count of arrivals at air and sea ports. In the year to September, it handed out 355,065 student visas, up 16 per cent on the figure for a year earlier.
The ONS-Home Office disparity is down to a number of factors, including the rule that says a foreigner staying for less than a year is not considered an immigrant. Some recipients of student visas never make it to Britain, while others who have studied using one never move back to their home countries.
SOURCE
Ah, the wonders of open immigration!
A comment from NJ
For some reason I don't think officials here and in the U.K. ever think all that deeply about the policy they've had for decades of opening their borders to characters like this:
A Taliban fighter in Dhani-Ghorri in northern Afghanistan last month told the Guardian he lived most of the time in east London, but came to Afghanistan for three months of the year for combat.
"I work as a minicab driver," said the man, who has the rank of a mid-level Taliban commander. "I make good money there [in the UK], you know. But these people are my friends and my family and it's my duty to come to fight the jihad with them."
It's certainly not that the average guy in London is any more liberal than here in the U.S. When I've been to pubs there, the guy next to me is just as likely as an American to grouse about open immigration.
As I've noted, one pub there was across from a new Islamic Center, and once the Muslims moved in they immediately started demanding the pub be closed. That failure to assimilate is reason enough to cut off immigration.
Regular people hate this sort of thing. But somehow the elected officials don't get it. Even Chris Christie, our allegedly conservative governor, keeps yapping about finding "a path to citizenship" for those illegals he doesn't really consider to be illegal.
Though a lot of wannabe conservatives are too dumb to figure it out, this attitude is what led directly to the Gropergate scandal. If we're going to let the whole world run around the West, then we have to have the same security standards in America as we do in Afghanistan. If you doubt that, consider the piece that ran in the Neocon Review recently laying out that very line of logic.
By the way, when these London-based Taliban want to fly to the U.S., they don't even need visas. They're U.K. citizens. They can get right on the plane.
So can someone tell me again what the case is for treating a young male of Mideastern origin the same as an aging granny in airports? I keep forgetting.
SOURCE (See the original for links)
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