As statistics show, the inflow of immigrants to Britain is near a record
As reported by the BBC, from September 2014 to September 2015, 172,000 people from EU countries arrived in the UK, accounting for 53% of all immigration. It is precisely migrants from EU countries and their social benefits that are one of the main, if not the primary, issues in the upcoming referendum on June 23 on Britain's membership in the EU.
One of the leading British Eurosceptics, leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) Nigel Farage, told the BBC, commenting on the latest NBS data, that Britain will not be able to curb immigration if it remains in the EU. 'As I have been saying for many years, we cannot control immigration while we remain in the European Union. The government's plans to reduce immigration to tens of thousands are laughable,' Farage said.
The British government plans to reduce net immigration to 100,000 over 12 months by 2020, while Farage believes it should be reduced to 30,000 people per year. Home Secretary Theresa May, who along with the prime minister belongs to the pro-EU camp, agrees with Eurosceptics that such a number of immigrants is too high. 'Immigration at this level creates problems for social services, the housing market, and infrastructure. It can hold back wage growth and contribute to rising unemployment among Britons,' Minister May believes.
At the same time, she is convinced that the agreement Prime Minister Cameron secured from the rest of the EU will allow reducing the inflow of immigrants from the EU: first, the initial lack of benefits will make Britain less attractive to some potential immigrants, and second, it will become easier for Britain to prevent entry or expel undesirable individuals.
Minister of Labor and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith, who has joined the Eurosceptic camp, objects that cutting benefits for the first four years of an EU immigrant's work will not only fail to reduce the inflow of newcomers but may also cause a sharp spike before these measures are implemented in 2017.
The organization of British entrepreneurs and managers, the Institute of Directors, considers the government's talk about the need to reduce immigration pointless, since almost all the growth in net migration, according to the Institute's estimates, is due to a decrease in the number of people leaving – that is, Britain's prosperity and attractiveness. 'If Britain's economy collapsed and people started leaving en masse, then these plans would become more realistic,' says Seamus Nevin, a press secretary for the Institute of Directors.
By December 2015, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, two million citizens of other EU countries were working in Britain. The number of labor immigrants without EU citizenship reached 1.2 million by the end of last year.
From September 2014 to September 2015, 165,000 EU citizens came to Britain to work. Of these, 96,000 (58%) came to a job already waiting for them, while 69,000 planned to find work upon arrival.