UK’s immigration claims exaggerated, says study

As per a study, only 24 percent of the migrants entering the United Kingdom since the year 1990 did so because of Britain being a member of the European Union. Conducted by The Independent, the study reveals that exiting from the EU would not reduce the levels of migration. Information documented by the ONS (Office for National Statistics) ONS from 1975 when Britain had just become a member of the EU shows low levels of immigration to the UK from the European countries in the last four decades. The newspaper, which made use of ONS data, was able to determine the counties from which 2.1 million migrants out of the total 5.2 million came to the UK dating back to the year 1990. According to The Independent, immigration levels began increasing since1990. Of the 2.1 million migrants arriving in the UK, citizens of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan comprised close to 40 percent and Chinese accounted for 15 percent of the migrants. About 11 percent of the migrants came from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada, five percent from the US and three percent from the Philippines. While about 10 percent of them came from the Western European countries, especially from Italy, Germany and France, around close to 15 percent came from countries that had joined the EU just then. These countries included Romania, Lithuania and Poland. Meanwhile, Poland, which contributed the fourth largest number of migrants following India, Pakistan and China since 1990, is seeing fewer people relocating to the UK than before. The number of Poles arriving in Britain has, in fact, halved between the years 2009 and 2014 when compared to the 2005-2008 period. The year 2014 saw India migrants outnumbering their Polish counterparts two to one.