200,000 immigrants to enter Britain EVERY year as numbers soar by 30%

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Last updated at 13:28pm on 27th September 2007

The number of people migrating to the UK will increase by 45,000 a year, according to new official figures published today.


Experts at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said their estimates had increased to 190,000 a year compared with 145,000 in calculations issued two years ago.


Changes to the way migration is estimated would also lead to earlier migration totals being "revised" later this year, it added.


It was thought the review was mainly due to higher numbers of eastern Europeans coming to Britain since their countries joined the EU.


Eastern European workers queue up outside the British Embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria, for visa applications (file photo)

The ONS figures emerged in a document outlining the statistical methods officials will use to estimate the total number of people in Britain.

It said: "The new long-term assumption for net migration to the United Kingdom is +190,000 each year compared with +145,000 a year in the previous projections.

"This increase is partly due to taking account of data for two new years - 2004 and 2005 - where net migration to the UK has been at record levels, and partly because of the impact of methodological changes following recent announcements of improvements to the estimation of international migration."

The changes will also affect estimates of the way migrants are distributed across the country, the paper said. England is projected to have 171,500 new migrants a year, more than 40,000 more than previous estimates.

Scotland's new arrivals are put at 8,500 a year compared with 4,000 previously, while Northern Ireland's population is scheduled to rise by 500 a year due to migration, rather than fall by 500.

However, Wales is expected to welcome 2,000 fewer new migrants overall, at 9,500 a year.

Today's figures also showed the ONS expects an average family size of 1.84 children per woman in the long term, an increase of one tenth of a percentage point compared with the 2004 projections.

Life expectancy for babies born in 2031 will also rise to 82.7 years for males and 86.2 years for females, up from 81.4 years and 85.0 years in earlier calculations, it added.

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, which campaigns against mass immigration, said: "This new assumption at last recognises that the present very high levels of immigration are likely to continue unless the Government moves from rhetoric to really effective measures.

"It means that our population will increase by about 8.7 million between 2004 and 2031, of which 7.2 million, or 86 per cent, will be due to immigration.

"Furthermore, housing demand simply for new immigrants will increase from 200 a day to 260 a day throughout the next 20 years."

He added: "Continued immigration on this scale is completely unacceptable to the vast majority of the public."