The number of Romanian and Bulgarian migrants entering into the UK has been growing at only a steady pace over the last seven years, despite controls having been lifted and fears that Britain would experience an influx.
The total population of the two nationalities in Britain is 252,000, of which more than 80% had already been in the country before labour market restrictions were relaxed on 1 January 2014, according to academics.
Migration Observatory, based at Oxford University, said the latest labour force survey figures showed that the overall population of Romanians and Bulgarians in the UK rose from 205,000 in September 2013 to 252,000 in September 2014, an increase of 47,000. This followed a similar rise of 45,000 in the corresponding period in 2012-13.
The agency’s director, Madeleine Sumption, said the end of migration controls “do not seem to have had a very significant effect”.
She said immigration from the two countries had been much more gradual than from other nations that joined the EU in 2004, such as Poland. At the time, the UK was one of only three EU countries which did not introduce transitional controls on migrants.
“It seems likely that the controls imposed in 2007, together with a weak economy at the end of the decade, may have slowed the pace of Romanian and Bulgarian migrants settling in the UK,” Sumption said.
Ukip’s Nigel Farage and others had predicted that 5,000 Romanians and Bulgarians would arrive “each week, every week” for several years.
