Britain immigrant numbers double

London: The number of immigrants living in Britain has almost doubled in less than three decades, official figures show.

More than 10 per cent of the population 6.7 million were born abroad, the Office for National Statistics has found.

The analysis shows that the count of those born abroad now agreed to be the best figure for measuring the rate of immigration is two million higher than it was just eight years ago.

And the figure is nearly double the 3.38 million people born abroad who were recorded as living in Britain in 1981.

The scale of immigration over the past few years was set out in a breakdown by National Statistician Jil Matheson, the recently-appointed head of the Government's Office for National Statistics.

She said that there are 689,000 migrants from Eastern Europe in Britain, an increase of 522,000 since Poland and seven other Eastern European countries joined the EU in 2004.

Projections

But these make up only one in ten of the foreign-born population of the country, Matheson found.

She also endorsed the ONS projections that say that the UK population will hit the politically sensitive 70 million mark in 2029. She added the recession is likely to have only a small impact on the record levels of immigration since 2001.

The ONS report found that Eastern Europeans have begun to emigrate as well as to arrive in Britain, and overall 20,000 more Eastern Europeans came to this country than left it in 2008.