Immigration into the UK

The Guardian newspaper recently posted this information on immigration:

“Since the year 2000 to June 2010 it is estimated that 572,000, people came into the UK. This figure has remained broadly the same since 2004.”

The way this information is presented appeared misleading and/or ambiguous. So I contacted MigrationwatchUK http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/

This is their response:

“Thank you for your email and for taking the time to write to us.

There has been a swell of interest in the numbers of people coming to the UK since Cameron made his speech which is excellent as there is a lot of misinformation out there.

I have taken data from the Office for National Statistics who compile the data on Long-term international migration, which gives us a good idea of the number of people leaving, coming in, and the net figure. Below are some figures for you:

Total number of people coming into the UK
1997 – 327,000
1998 – 391,000
1999 – 454,000
2000 – 479,000
2001 – 481,000
2002 – 516,000
2003 – 511,000
2004 – 589,000
2005 – 567,000
2006 – 596,000
2007 – 574,000
2008 – 590,000
2009 – 567,000

So as you can see, over the period of 1997 to 2009 there has been a massive increase in the number of people coming to the UK. Of course these are offset in numbers terms by those emigrating. If we take these numbers into account we get a net migration which is either positive or negative, depending on whether more people came than left. Net migration has been high for a number of years. In 1996 net migration was +55,000. This figure hit +245,000 in 2004 and for the year June 1009 – June 2010, net migration was +226,000.
Annual statistics on migration will be released in August of this year for the year 2010.

I hope this is of help to you.”

See link for details on how the Guardian presents this information:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/jun/26/non-eu-immigration-uk-statistics?commentpage=2#start-of-comments