May 20 2008 – Record 160,000 foreigners granted citizenship as 200,000 Britons leave the UK
The number of foreigners granted British citizenship reached record levels last year, new figures showed today.
Government data revealed 164,635 foreign nationals became British, up 7 per cent on the previous 12 months.
However, separate figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) will show that more than 200,000 Britons emigrated during 2006, taking the total number who left the UK between 1997 and 2006 to 1.97million.
That means 3.9million foreigners arrived in Britain over the past ten years.
Citizenship pledge: More than 160,000 foreign nationals became British while more than 200,000 Britons emigrated during 2006
The number of new British citizens outstripped the previous record of 161,700 in 2005 - a peak which was attributed to a rush of applications before the introduction of new requirements on applicants.
Another set of figures showed the total number of eastern Europeans whose countries joined the EU in 2004 who have applied to work in Britain has reached topped 800,000.
The total of 845,000 represented the number who applied from the EU expansion in May 2004 until the end of March this year. More than half a million are from Poland.
About 45,000 people from the so-called "A8" nations applied in the first three months of this year, compared with 52,000 in the same period last year.
Since 2004 there have been 24,850 applications for income-related benefits such as Jobseekers Allowance and Income Support by the new A8 residents, of which 19,000 were rejected and 5,818 allowed to proceed.
The total number of children of A8 families receiving child benefit has topped 100,000 for the first time. There were just under 13,000 applications granted in the first three months of this year bringing the total number of child benefit pay-outs to 102,029.
A further 58,000 A8 applicants are receiving tax credits.
Further documents released by the Home Office today showed the number of Romanian and Bulgarian workers in the UK - who are not included in the A8 figures. There were 945 applications for accession worker cards in the first three months of this year by Romanians and Bulgarians, of which 360 were approved, and 7,145 applications for registration certificates, of which 5,900 were granted.
The number of asylum applications in the first three months of this year also increased , up 16% to 6,595, compared with the same period in 2007.
The number of failed asylum seekers deported from January to March was down 13 per cent to 2,805, while the total number of people removed - including other categories of people such as foreign criminals - was up 12 per cent to 16,760.
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