One migrant a minute landed in the UK under Labour regime

London, Feb.22 (ANI): Research has shown that when immigration was at its peak before 2009, one immigrant legally moved to the UK every minute.

According to the Daily Express, net migration quadrupled as a result and soared to 3.2 million foreigners under the previous Labour regime.

About 697,000 migrants came from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh over the last decade while another 695,000 arrived from nations including China and the war-torn countries of Afghanistan and Somalia.

The figure was 299,000 for those coming from the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.

Campaign group MigrationWatch UK said the largest wave of immigration for 1,000 years is further swelled by a million if the estimated number of illegal immigrants allowed to slip into Britain is taken into account.

Sir Andrew Green, the think-tank's chairman, said: "The sheer scale of what has occurred is changing Britain fundamentally and irrevocably and in ways the majority of the population did not ask for, were not consulted about and did not wish to see."

He said the legal introduction of 3.2 million people - three times the population of Birmingham - was increasing the pressure on "roads, railways, housing, infrastructure, the environment, schools, hospitals and the general quality of life".

The startling picture of Labour's failure is revealed in the most comprehensive study of immigration to date.

The report uses long-term international migration data from the Office for National Statistics to show that 3.2 million foreign migrants entered the UK between 1997 and 2009. In the same time period nearly a million Britons left the UK.

The figures come as the UK population is heading for 70 million in 20 years' time, 68 per cent of the increase being be due to immigration. (ANI)