Foreign-born people now make up almost one in ten of the population after a decade of high levels of immigration, according to a report published yesterday.

The foreign-born population has risen by almost half a million a year and is “significantly higher” than in previous decades.

A key factor in a surge in 2005 was the influx of migrants from former Soviet bloc states that joined the EU in May 2004, said the report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The organisation’s annual international migration outlook said that the proportion of foreign-born people in 2005 was 9.7 per cent, or about 5.8 million. Indians made up the largest group with 570,000, followed by 417,000 from the Republic of Ireland and 274,000 from Pakistan.

Since May 2004 an estimated 630,000 migrants from Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia have registered for work and an unknown number of self-employed workers from the eight states have come here.

The report said that in 2002 there were only 24,000 Polish citizens in Britain, rising to 110,000 in 2005. By 2006 the total – including those who had taken on British nationality – stood at 229,000.

The report also documented a fall in the number of people seeking asylum, though Britain remains the second-most-popular destination for asylum seekers among the 30 members of the club of industrialised states. In first place was France. Asylum applications peaked at more than 103,000 in 2002 but new laws introduced by the Government, plus a general decline in applications in Western Europe, reduced numbers to 30,800 in 2005.

The report shows that increasing numbers of foreign-born residents are taking up British nationality, with 161,780 becoming naturalised in 2005, compared with 37,010 in 1997, the year Labour came to power.

There was a surge in applications for citizenship before November 2005, when new tests on English language and life in Britain had to be taken to obtain a British passport.

Since Labour came to power, one million immigrants have been granted citizenship, though the number given a passport in 2006 fell by 5 per cent on the previous year.

Almost one third of new citizens in 2006 came from Africa originally with a further 19 per cent from the Indian sub-continent and a further 16 per cent from the rest of Asia.

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