Eastern European immigration to the UK: the facts

Gordon Brown might be attempting to shift the focus from bigotgate to the economy today, but the whole Gillian Duffy affair has yet again shone a light on an issue bubbling under in this general election: immigration. We wanted to get some definitive datasets together on the issue so you can make your own mind up - but with the facts at the base. The spreadsheet below contains the key information on migration - and the Eastern European migrants. Here's what we have: Total numbers of people coming into the UK and leaving Since the year 2000. It shows that 518,000 People came into the UK in the year to end June 2009 - down by 3% on the previous year. 317,000 people left the UK in the same year. Of that number coming in, 68,000 were from Eastern Europe (the A8 Accession countries), 58,000 left - the difference between the two (the migration balance) being 10,000 . SOURCE: ONS Worker registrations by Eastern Europeans Workers from the Accession countries have to register in the UK and the figures here show a decrease in recent years. In 2009, there were 106,390 applications accepted - down from 158,545 the year before. In total, there have been 703,620 applications accepted since 2006. Workers from Romania and Bulgaria have a separate process - 20,180 workers applied for seasonal agricultural employment in 2009, up from 16,460 the year before. SOURCE: Home Office UK population by country of birth Poland is now the second highest in this table (behind India) with 503,000 people. In 2004 it wasn't in the top 60. SOURCE: ONS UK employment by country of birth and nationality This shows that although numbers of Eastern Europeans have grown in the UK, they still form a comparatively small part of the workforce: 472,000 workers (or 1.63% of the workforce) by the end of 2009, compared to 13,000 (0.05% of workforce) at the end of 1997, the year Labour came to power. The full data is below. Is there anything we've missed - and can you do anything with it? SOURCE: ONS Download the data • DATA: download the full datasheet World government data • Search the world's government data with our gateway Can you do something with this data? Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group or mail us at [email protected] • Get the A-Z of data • More at the Datastore directory • Follow us on Twitter