When people talk of mass  immigration to the UK they really mean mass immigration  to England.  The  2001 census gave this breakdown by ethnic group for the UK:     

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=455

 The white group comprised   White British   50,366,497   85.67%

                                                     White (other)   3,096,169         5.27%

The non-white population will be underestimated  because of  (1) the fact  that the ethnic origin question  relied on the willingness of the census form filler to answer the question honestly or at all and (2) the large number of illegal immigrants. The latter  are overwhelmingly non-white, not least because the countries with majority white populations have a large degree of legal access to the UK  (EU Associates such as Switzerland  and the EU countries barring Bulgaria and Romania   have complete access and foreigners  with  a British parent or grandparent are granted a large degree of access) while the countries with majority non-white  populations have much more restricted  access.) The Census is also distorted because of the many  legal residents without English, a growing number of old people who are not up to completing the census  and a large population of transient residents such as students. The 2001 census had  98% of forms returned.

The extent of the possible  discrepancies   is shown by a council in central London: “Westminster council has the most cause to feel hard done by. In 2000, in the so-called mid-year population estimate, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) counted 244,000 people as living under the wing of the local authority. A year later, the official census (also carried out by the ONS) provided a figure of just 181,000. “We’re adamant that something major did go wrong,” says Kit Malthouse, deputy leader of Westminster council. The ONS and the council are now trying to work out where the discrepancy lies by comparing their lists of addresses for the area.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2003/sep/11/thisweekssciencequestions).

This seeming undercounting in places such as Westminster had a profound effect on their  central government funding which was based substantially on the size of  a borough’s population. More broadly, under reporting of population had  implications for EU funding because a lower population meant a higher average income, whereas a lower average income meant a greater likelihood of  EU grants.  Westminster response was to compile its own population count “ from sources such as the number of people paying council tax, or who registered to vote, or who used its hospitals. For example, it found that between 1991 and 2001, its electoral register rose by 26 per cent, and the primary school rolls by 28 per cent. In the end, its count came up with a figure close to the ONS’s pre-census estimate. “We have a very mobile population, a high proportion of young people, asylum seekers, students, hostels,” Malthouse said. “Twenty-five per cent of our population turns over every year… There were obviously problems in getting forms to the people… They say that our population fell by 6,000 over ten years, but during that period we have built 8,500 homes”  (http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2003/11/thelastcensus/)

The completion of forms in some areas was pitiful, viz:   “If you get a response rate of 95-98 per cent and then you have the coverage survey it is very clear it will work,” Gill Eastabrook, the then chief executive of the statistics commission, told me in May. “What happened in Westminster is that they did not get anything like 90 per cent. It was in the 70s…The problem is in the inner cities. But it is not that simple. Oxford and Cambridge are quite high up the list. It might have something to do with students. This is not about undermining the census as a whole. It is about specific bits.” The commission’s inquiry into the census, conducted at Westminster’s request, is due in the second half of October.” ( http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2003/11/thelastcensus/)

The discrepancy between the 2000 mid-year estimate and the 2001 census for the overall UK population was approximately 1 million.  Len Cook, the head of the ONS, tried to explain the missing people by various means such as students registering at more than one address,  sour grapes on the part of councils who by implication had been receiving funds for people who did not exist, claiming that the mid year estimates were wrong and most improbably, that  the emigrants from the UK,  overwhelmingly men  in twenties  and thirties,  had been  not been recorded as having emigrated.  The last reason  provoked this scornful comment from ,” said David Coleman, professor of demographics at Oxford University:

“To suggest that 800,000 white British males had left these shores unannounced over the last decade was beggaring belief, especially as there was no evidence of them cavorting on Bondi beach…The influx of asylum seekers and ethnic minorities – many of whom are known from past surveys to be undercounted, especially in major urban areas – would a priori be a more plausible explanation for the shortfall on the census figures.” Illegal immigrants, who would avoid direct, doorstep measures like a census, could show up on other records, like doctors’ lists or housing records – thus possibly accounting for the difference between Cook’s count and councils’ estimates.” (http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2003/11/thelastcensus/)

In short, the most likely explanation was that many immigrants, the overwhelming majority of whom were non-white, had not been counted.

In the end the figures were fudged with the aid of an independent follow-up survey called the census coverage survey (CCS)  conducted just after the Census during  four weeks in May and June 2001. Over 4,000 professional interviewers conducted 320,000 10-minute interviews on doorsteps in all regions of the country with a particular concentration of effort on the inner-city districts likely to have had the worst return on census night.  From this estimates were made of the profile of the missing  million. These were then included in the final census statistics.  (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2277835.stm)

The regional distribution of the non-white population in the 2001 census

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=457

 

Regional distribution of the non-White population, April 2001  Census

Non-White ethnic groups comprised  9 per cent of the total population in England compared with only 2 per cent in both Scotland and Wales, and less than 1 per cent in Northern Ireland.

The concentration of non-white population  in the 2001 Census

45 per cent lived in the London region in 2001, where they comprised 29 per cent of all residents.  The  West Midlands had  13 per cent of the non-White population,  the South East and North West 8 per cent each  and Yorkshire and the Humber 7 per cent.    81% of all non-whites lived in those five regions.

Less than 4 per cent of those from non-White groups lived in the North East and the South West. Minority ethnic groups made up only 2 per cent of each of these regions’ populations.

Seventy eight per cent of Black Africans, and 61 per cent of Black Caribbeans and 54 per cent of Bangladeshis  lived in London.  Of  Pakistanis 19 per cent resided in London,  21 per cent in the West Midlands, 20 per cent in Yorkshire and the Humber, and 16 per cent in the North West.

How the population has changed since 2001

The latest official population estimate (2009)  for the UK is 61.8 million. (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=6) . That is a three million increase over the 2001 census figure. http://www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/Product.asp?vlnk=15106

The figures for each of the home countries in 2001 were

England

49,138,831

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/census2001/profiles/64.asp

Wales

2,903,085

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/census2001/pyramids/pages/w.asp

Scotland

5,062,011

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/census2001/pyramids/pages/179.asp

Northern Ireland

1,685,267

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/census2001/pyramids/pages/152.asp

Getting hard figures for population changes since 2001 is next to impossible. However, these are  latest official population estimates (2009) for each of the home countries

England  51,809,700   Increase  since 2001  2,670,869   percentage increase   5.43%   

Wales      2,999,300     Increase  since 2001      96,215    percentage increase   3.31%

Scotland   5,194,000    Increase since  2001     131,989  percentage increase    2.05%

N. Ireland 1,788,900   Increase  since 2001    103,633  percentage increase     6.15%    

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/Product.asp?vlnk=15106 click on  Mid Year Population Estimates 2009: 24/06/10 (2.7Mb – Zip) then click on each country’s Excel file

The latest Government estimates of on-going immigration and emigration are:

Migration Statistics Quarterly Report No 8: February 2011 (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/mig0211.pdf  –  p4)

“Estimated total long-term immigration to the UK in the year to June 2010 was 572,000, similar to the level seen since 2004• [This includes British citizens returning].

“The provisional estimate of net long-term migration to the UK in the year to June 2010 was 226,000. This continues the increase since the year to December 2008, when net migration was 163,000. The increase has primarily been driven by the fall in emigration. (Figure 1.1) p5

“The estimated number of non-British citizens immigrating long term to the UK in the year to June 2010 was 455,000, not statistically significantly different from the estimate of 432,000 in the year to June 2009. The estimated number of non-British citizens emigrating long term from the UK was 200,000, not statistically significantly different from the estimate of 224,000 in the year to June 2009. (Figure 1.3) p6”

Since 2001 net annual migration into the UK has never been less than 148,000 (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/pop0809.pdf)

In 2009 it was reported that “The number of immigrants in the UK has risen by more than two million since 2001, according to a Government report.  Around 6.6 million UK residents – 11 per cent of the population – were born abroad, according to surveys by consultancy Oxford Economics.” (http://www.immigrationmatters.co.uk/2-million-more-immigrants-in-uk-since-2001.html)

A vision of the future is shown by the demography of children. The  Daily Telegraph reported in 2007 of  ethnic minorities  that “Across the country, they account for almost 22 per cent of pupils at primary school compared to 20.6 per cent last year. At secondary level, numbers rose at a similar rate, to 17.7 per cent…. Across inner and outer London, black and Asian pupils outnumber white British children by about six to four.” (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1564365/One-fifth-of-children-from-ethnic-minorities.html ).

 The future

Leeds University published research in 2010 which produced projections of the ethnic composition of the UK population in 2051: ETHNIC POPULATION PROJECTIONS FOR THE UK  (http://www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/853/uk_in_2051_to_be_significantly_more_diverse) This estimated that  21 per cent of the UK population would be non-white and that the white British component would have fallen to 67 per cent with an overall white population of 79 per cent (http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/fileadmin/downloads/school/research/projects/migrants/WP_ETH_POP_PROJECTIONS.pdf – see para 20).

Demographic projections are notoriously treacherous but 21 per cent in 2051 strikes me as being very conservative. As the size of the non-white population grows they will inevitably gain more political power both at local and national level. That will make it increasingly difficult for any  Government to stem the flow.  In addition, if the UK remains within the EU there will be a continuing flow from the poorer EU countries, some of which will be non-white as the non-white population of the EU is growing.  There is also the looming possibility of Turkey’s admission to the EU which would grant 70 million (at present figures) Muslims the right to move freely within the EU.  There could also conceivably be other countries joining the EU, especially those in Eastern Europe.  The EU’s  growing power may also  mean other countries which are not members of the EU, will  come to enjoy the same migration privileges as countries such as Switzerland and Norway which have an arrangement with the EU which means they would be  signed up to the “four freedoms” of the EU which includes freedom of movement.  

To the poisonous embrace of the EU can be added treaties and conventions such as the European Convention on Human Rights and the UN Convention on Refugees.  As global instability  grows through a mixture of economic globalisation and Western liberal internationalist interventionism such as that in Libya at present, the flow of refugees is likely to increase and the difficulty in removing them from the UK worsen as judges make the law derived from the Human Rights Act ever tighter.

On the domestic  level, the younger age profile of non-white  immigrants and their descendants  born in Britain and their higher  reproduction rates  point to an inexorable overhauling of the native white population.  The larger their percentage in their population, the greater will be the demand for foreign relatives to be allowed to settle in the UK.

Counterbalancing the non-white population growth will be  foreign white immigration . These people in principle will be able to become complete assimilated within a generation if they choose that path. As the numbers of white immigrants from the EU is large and communities big enough to form cultural  ghettos,  the assimilation may take longer than a generation. However,  even if they do not rapidly completely assimilate, there will be much less cause for friction between them  and the native white population because the racial issue do not arise. The growth of non-white groups  will also be a driver for white immigrants and their descendants to assimilate because contrary to what liberals claim to believe racial solidarity is potent.

There is no reason to believe that the settlement and demographic patterns within the UK of  the past sixty  years  will change dramatically, especially in the case of the non-white  population which is overwhelmingly in England.  Groups which have a strong identity and reason to maintain it will  continue to live in and move to areas where their groups are already strong. That means England (and particularly the south East and the larger cities) will be subject to ever increasing non-white settlement and reproduction.  

Can anything be done to stop England becoming a place which is unrecognisable as the homeland of the English?  The answer is yes if the political will is there. The first thing would be the recovery of control of our borders. That requires the UK’s  withdrawal from the EU, the repeal of the Human Rights Act, the repudiation of the UN Convention on  Refugees and the repudiation of any other treaty or UK Statute which prevents control of our borders.  British citizenship should be denied to anyone  who  was not born here or possessed of a parent who was British. Having done that,  it will be possible to start removing the illegal immigrants and making life less comfortable for immigrants legally here but without citizenship.  This could be done by withdrawing the benefits of the Welfare state in its broadest sense  from them; those without work deported  and a  legal right given to any native Briton to take a job being done by a foreigner provided they were capable of doing the job.  Finally, dual citizenship should be made illegal and those with dual nationality who wished to remain in the UK would have to relinquish any nationality other than British.