Romanian surge behind record UK immigration total of 800,000

Angela Merkel knows that open borders and national immigration policies are simply unsustainable

THE number of immigrants who came to work in Britain last year reached a record high of more than 800,000 – with Romanians tripling in just 12 months.

Previously-unpublished data obtained by The Daily Telegraph shows the massive overall increase was powered by huge rises in arrivals from the rest of the European Union.

More than 152,000 Romanians registered for National Insurance (NI) numbers in 2014 – a key indicator – compared with just 47,000 in 2013.

The total for all nationalities was up by more than a third year-on-year to 824,000, including 629,000 from the EU, 100,000 from Asia and 79,000 from the rest of the world. The data also showed: The return of large-scale Irish immigration with 19,300 Irish nationals registering for NI numbers last year compared with less than 10,000 before the global crash.

Italians are now the second-largest group, overtaking the Spanish.

The highest number of Greeks came to Britain since 2002, with 10,500 new arrivals last year, up 17 per cent.

NI registrations from Bulgaria also rose sharply from 17,800 in 2013/14 to 40,600 last year, up 28 per cent and the highest number on record. Poles accounted for nearly 116,000 of the total but saw a less pronounced increase year-on-year, with a 13 per cent rise.

The latest net migration figures – the difference between those arriving in the UK minus those emigrating – are due out today. The previous quarter’s numbers showed a year-on-year increase from 209,999 to 318,000.

An influential Conservative thinktank will today say the Government needs to adopt new migration targets.

Ryan Shorthouse, director of Bright Blue, said: “The Conservative Government needs to develop a strong record of competence on managing our immigration system. That means new, deliverable targets – such as on non-EU gross migration rather than overall net migration – which the public can hold the Government to account on.”

A Government spokesman said: “The

‘The Government needs to develop a strong record of competence on managing our immigration system’

British public are rightly concerned that people come to this country for the right reasons. This Government has led the way with a series of measures to tackle abuses, tighten immigration routes, and toughen up the rules on access to UK benefits.”

Lord Green, chairman of Migration-Watch UK, said the levels of NI numbers were “quite remarkable”.

Thousands of Poles living in Britain must be enticed home, the country’s new President has said. Young Poles are leaving for Germany and the UK due to high unemployment and low wages, Andrzej Duda admitted.

“It is an important task of Polish politics, to create such conditions that they return home,” he said.

As Europe struggles with its worst migration crisis in more than half a century, all eyes are once again on Angela Merkel. The German Chancellor took a huge political gamble this week by tearing up the EU’s rulebook, while also demanding a new deal that would force Britain to accept hundreds of thousands of refugees.

Faced with a human flood, Mrs Merkel has abandoned the Dublin Convention that requires asylumseekers to be processed in their country of arrival. Berlin’s new policy will allow Syrian refugees to apply for asylum in Germany, rather than in their first port of call.

Deciding to do such a thing without the approval of Brussels will surely encourage other EU countries to pursue their own migration policies, too. But this is the last thing Mrs Merkel wants. She and President Hollande of France have just called for a new, binding European agreement to share the asylum burden.

Her proposals, however, were greeted with incredulity by other member states, their inherent flaw being that they would give millions more migrants an added incentive to come to Europe. Mr Cameron, along with other leaders, is resisting Mrs Merkel’s move, despite moral blackmail from EU and UN officials.

Mrs Merkel may not like it but many Germans, who are expecting a record 800,000 asylum-seekers this year, feel that they have already taken more than their fair share. They blame their coalition government for being a soft touch and street protests are reaching a crescendo. Yesterday, Mrs Merkel was greeted by angry protests and shouts of “traitor” as she visited an embattled refugee hostel near Dresden. Solving this crisis is proving to be the greatest challenge of her career.

The consensus in Berlin is that Europe’s combination of open borders and different national immigration policies is unsustainable. The present uncontrolled influx is not how the system is designed to work – but the scale of the exodus from the Muslim world means that rules are being flouted as each country protects its own interest.

Meanwhile, the lack of border controls within Europe is allowing migrants to make for countries with generous rules on asylum and welfare, especially Germany and the UK. Britain, with a strong economy, is a powerful draw for migrants but we are outside the borderless Schengen area and Theresa May is determined to keep asylum seekers out of the UK. Unsurprisingly, the German media is portraying the Tory government as selfish.

The blame game is, however, as pointless as it is undemocratic. The British public will not accept an EU policy that imposes quotas of migrants without our consent. Nor will most other countries – including Germany. So the EU’s asylum system is buckling and everywhere support is surging for extremist parties of Left and Right.

Mrs Merkel, European figurehead, has the experience and authority to restore order to the anarchy. And Mr Cameron has hitherto enjoyed the best relationship with the chancellor of any European leader. He has, moreover, a direct interest in reforming the EU’s migration regime as it is bound to loom large in the coming referendum.

So will the British and German governments make common cause? They should, but they face very different challenges. Mr Cameron wants to restore national control over migration from inside the EU, while Mrs Merkel wants European control of migration from outside Europe.

Their first priority must be to stabilise the crisis that began with the fallout from the Syrian civil war. That would require the EU to impose much stricter external border controls, while helping Mediterranean countries, the first ports of call, to accommodate asylum-seekers and process their applications. Mrs Merkel has promised to do more to help Greece and Italy cope, and today she will attend a summit in Vienna, where Balkan countries will also demand aid, especially Macedonia, which has declared a state of emergency.

The next step would be to restore a measure of national sovereignty to the larger question of economic migration. Mrs Merkel refuses to compromise on the principle of free movement, but she could show more flexibility by allowing each country to interpret that principle in its own way.

Right now, she faces a stark choice between nation states acting independently or the creation of Fortress Europe. Either the EU permits the restoration of national control over immigration – which means the end of free movement within Europe – or the EU turns itself into a fortress, excluding genuine refugees as well as economic migrants, while preserving its internal freedom of movement. It will not be lost on older readers that “Fortress Europe” – Festung Europa – was Hitler’s name for Nazi-occupied Europe. Such a reactionary idea would be impractical as well as deeply unpopular.

Meanwhile, having unilaterally abrogated the Dublin Convention, Mrs Merkel can hardly expect other countries to accept an EU diktat, especially if it obliges them to absorb migrants in very large numbers. So perhaps Europe would indeed do better to adopt a more empirical, every-man-for-himself solution, giving states free rein to decide for themselves how to deal with migration. It is pretty much what Germany is doing now.

But this would of course have serious implications for the European project and its very identity. What should Europe be? Inclusive and engaged with the world? Or exclusive and protectionist?

This gathering storm will test the idea of European integration – as well as leaders’ political careers – to destruction. As the crisis boosts the British “No” campaign, the prospect of Brexit should enable Mr Cameron to drive a harder bargain in his renegotiation, if he truly wants it. But equally, public opinion will harden further against him and Europe if he lets the crisis escalate much further.

After all, if Europe cannot make up its mind about who counts as a European, what is the point of belonging to the EU?