Ten million people are living in the UK now that they were born abroad – that’s one sixth of the population.
Census figures have revealed that the number of people hailing from abroad has increased by 2.5 million over the past decade.
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The number of Romanian-born people who now live in Romania increased by 576 percent from 80,000 in 2011, to 539,000 in 2021, with the increase following the lifting work restrictions in the EU in 2014.
This was the greatest increase of any country in England or Wales. The Eastern European country is now the fourth most frequent non-UK nation of birth.
India is still the most populous country in the world with 925,000 residents, which accounts for 1.5 percent of our 59.6million people in England.
Italy also made it into the top 10 non UK countries of birth, increasing to 277,000 in the ten-year period to 2021. That’s a 66% increase.
A little over 6 million people had a non-UK passport. The most popular was the Polish identity document, which 760,000 of them have.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman yesterday said: “The UK has always been a diverse country and we celebrate that.”
But Alp Mehmet, Chairman of Migration Watch UK, said: “These astonishing figures confirm that the number of overseas-born in the population of England and Wales has more than doubled to ten million since 2001.
“The high and uncontrolled level of immigration has meant young people struggling to get onto the housing ladder, worsening strains on the NHS and the irrevocable loss of green space.
“The government must get a grip of immigration as they have promised, but failed, to do for over ten years.”
Census deputy director Jon Wroth-Smith said: “We can see Romanians have been a big driver in this change, while there have also been increases due to migration from India, Pakistan and Poland, as well as Southern European countries such as Italy.
“We can also see that migration in the year prior to census was lower in 2021 than it was in 2011.
“This is likely, in large part, due to the various travel restrictions in place during the coronavirus pandemic.”