"2.3 Million immigrants come to UK in 16 years"*

An analysis of the latest immigration statistics from the Office of National Statistics by think-tank Migrationwatch shows that in the years 1991 – 2006 there was a net movement of some 2.3 million people to the UK - only 8% of which came from the new East European members of the EU

* Although Migration Watch correctly refer to net immigration in the press release (as quoted above), they gave it a rather misleading title. The underlying statistics are available here, gross immigration was actually 6.7 million over the period, but 4.8 million people emigrated. Which looks more like net immigration of 1.9 million to me, but never mind, the figures are subject to a huge margin of error anyway.

But Migration Watch's basic point still stands; there were small net outflows to the Old Commonwealth countries, the EU 15 and the USA; a modest net inflow of 175,000 from the newest twelve EU countries**; and colossal net inflows of nearly a million from the New Commonwealth countries and nearly 900,000 from 'other' countries.

** Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Czech Rep, Slovakia, Slovenia, Malta and Cyprus in 2004; Romania and Bulgaria in 2007.