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Nine Of The Most Surprising Facts About Immigration

Nine Things You Probably Didn't Know About Immigration To The UK
Aubrey Allegretti
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Immigration has become an increasingly salient topic in Britain.

After the storm that erupted after David Cameronreferred to migrants in Calais as a "swarm", the issue of immigration into the UK continues to prove a divisive one.

But research continues to show there is a substantial gap between what the public thinks to be true and what the reality of the situation is.

We've compiled nine of the most surprising facts about UK immigration to help bust some of those myths, with research by Bloomberg.

9 Surprising Facts About Immigration
(01 of09)
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Foreign-born residents make up almost 16 percent of the 31 million-strong labour force.Of the total number of overseas workers, 60% were born outside the EU. 16% are from western Europe, while 15% are from eastern Europe. The two poorest EU countries, Romania and Bulgaria, accounted for 3.8% of workers.
(02 of09)
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In fact, the British public overestimates the share of immigrants in the total population: Respondents to a poll by Ipsos MORI earlier this year guessed it was 21%. The actual figure is 13%, according to the UK's Office of National Statistics.
(03 of09)
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Immigration has risen significantly in the last 20 years, spiking most recently after a decade of stability.
(04 of09)
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The UK isn’t the largest EU port of call for migrants.
(05 of09)
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And despite all the talk about “Polish plumbers” and Ukip leader Nigel Farage’s call to leave the EU to “regain control” over the country’s borders, most people vying to settle in Britain come from outside the trading bloc. The top two arriving nationalities are in fact Chinese and Indian.
(06 of09)
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Foreign arrivals come mostly to work or study and about two-thirds of those moving for employment already have job offers when they arrive, even as politicians decry “benefit tourism.” In researcher NatCen’s British Social Attitudes Survey, taken in 2013 and published in June 2014, 24 percent of respondents said they believed welfare was the most common motive for migration when that was listed as one of the choices.
(07 of09)
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While legal foreign residents are eligible for social welfare, 93% of the 5.3 million people claiming aid, such as jobseekers’ allowance and disability benefits, have British nationality.
(08 of09)
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Three EU nationalities are among the top 10 benefit claimants of foreign birth.
(09 of09)
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Seventy-six percent of Romanians and Bulgarians who arrived in the U.K. last year came for work. That compares with 61% of people from the original 15 EU members and 67% of people from the eight eastern European countries that joined the bloc in 2004. Popular perceptions are different: In a report analyzing language used by 19 British national newspapers in the two years preceding the lifting of a seven-year ban on employment, Oxford University’s Migration Observatory said that words used to describe Romanians frequently evoked crime and anti-social behavior, especially in the tabloid press.

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