How 50,000 migrants came to UK from Romania and Bulgaria in just one year: Figure up by 19,000 in a year after were given right to work freely in Britain

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A new wave of immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria is behind the increase in the number of Europeans coming into Britain.

Citizens of the two states, which joined the EU in 2007, now make up almost one in ten of all UK immigrants.

Romania ranks behind only India and China as the country sending the most migrants to this country, an Office for National Statistics report said yesterday.

Join the queue: Romanian migrants line up in Portsmouth to vote in their country's Presidential election, along with thousands of their compatriots in Britain

It found that in the year to June, 50,000 migrants arrived from the two countries whose nationals were given the right to work freely in Britain at the start of last year – 19,000 more than in the previous 12 months.

A count of National Insurance numbers suggested that even more people may be arriving from Romania and Bulgaria. In the year to September, 206,000 of their citizens took out an NI number, something needed by anybody who wishes to work legally in Britain.

The figure is a count of real people rather than a calculation from a comparatively small-scale survey.

Romania is now in the top five of countries where those coming to Britain last lived for the first time, accounting for 6% of all immigration

The growing scale of immigration from the two countries confounds the predictions of experts who said that few would come, despite the dramatically higher pay levels for workers in Britain compared to Eastern Europe.

Romanian ambassador Dr Ion Jinga said just before the gates were opened to workers from the ‘EU2’ in January 2014 that Romanians coming to Britain would be ‘fewer than in the previous years’. 

When free movement of Romanians and Bulgarians was introduced, ministers refused to predict how many would come to the UK.

Some 336,000 more people arrived in the UK than left in the last year, more than treble the Prime Minister's target of cutting net migration to under 100,000

But the 50,000 figure put out by the ONS yesterday was precisely the level predicted by the Migration Watch UK think-tank. Its vice-chairman, Alp Mehmet, said: ‘This figure is very much in line with our projections. They are no surprise.’

The ONS said immigration from Romania and Bulgaria was the only ‘statistically significant’ increase in immigration from the EU.

It said that nine out of every 100 immigrants to Britain were from Romania or Bulgaria, and that during 2014, some 34,000 people came from Romania alone.

The 50,000 new arrivals from Romania and Bulgaria in the 12 months to June mirror the figure predicted by Migration Watch when migrants from the two countries were given unrestricted access to Britain.

Just before restrictions were lifted in January 2014, the organisation said: ‘Our view is that they are likely to add between 30,000 and 70,000 to our population in each of the next five years of which about half will appear in the immigration statistics.

‘So our central estimate is 50,000 a year or 250,000 in five years. However, that number could be considerably higher if there were to be a movement of Roma to the UK.’

Previous data from the Office for National Statistics in 2014 showed there were 189,000 from the two Eastern European countries ‘by birth’ working in the UK by the end of September that year.

It represented a 49,000 year-on-year increase, or just under 35 per cent, compared with when restrictions were in place.