UK Emigration Set to Dip Below 100,000

According to official figures, there will be a 6 percent drop in new claims for asylum stats and a 58 percent increase in the number of passports issued. Net emigration to Britain is set to drop below the 100,000 a year mark. This puts the government on course to reach its stated aim of reducing levels to tens of thousands rather than hundreds of thousands.

The figures also show that more eastern European emigrants are leaving the UK than arriving. There was a difference of about 12,000 in the year to September 2009. The annual citizenship figures for 2009 also showed more than 203,000 people were granted a British passport last year. This was an increase of 58 percent over the previous year but mainly because staff were diverted to other tasks in 2008.

The newest asylum figures show that the number of new claims for refugee status lodged during 2009 was 6 percent lower than the previous year at 24,250. The numbers go on to show that 230 children were detained in emigration enters during the first months of this year. The government has pledged to end child detention in emigration centers.

These overall figures show a continued decline in the net emigration of the UK. For the people that do not know, net emigration is the number of people coming to work and study minus the number of people leaving to live abroad.

Tim Finch, the head of emigration at the Institute of Public Policy Research, said that declining net emigration by UK citizens disguises an even more dramatic fall in net emigration for non-British citizens. This was a number that was just 185,000 in the year to September 2009. It was down 27 percent on the year to 2008 and compared to peaks of well over 300,000 in 2004-2005.