Two million citizens have moved out of Britain in the last decade

On May 20, 2008, the Office for National Statistics released that over the past ten years there have been almost two million Britons who have moved abroad.  In 2006, the number of Britons that emigrated was over 200,000.  This made the total number of Britons that have moved abroad to 1.97 million between the years 1997 and 2006.

This research has shown that this has been the largest wave of emigration from Britain in the final numbers.  However, in the 1930s and midway through the 19^th century, there was a bigger proportion of the number of people who left.  The most popular place that they go to is Australia, and the majority of the wave consists of Britons who are retiring abroad.  However, only little more than 6% of them are at the age for retirement.  Research has also given them an estimate that there are over 5.5 million Britons who are living abroad.  Also in the same decade, foreign national residents in numbers of 1.58 million left Britain.  Some of these were foreigners who became citizens and left later on.

Although there has been a great number of the population leaving Britain, there have also been a great number of foreigners who have been arriving as well.  Within the decade there have been 3.9 million new comers to the country of Britain and 500,000 of them came in 2006 alone.  Last year, 2007, the number of people who became British citizens was up 7 % and reached a record level.

www.statistics.gov.uk