Drive to count number of illegal immigrants
Statistics office will cross reference records and databases to estimate true size of black economy
THE true number of illegal immigrants in the UK is to be revealed for the first time as part of a census by the Office for National Statistics.
The ONS has been commissioned to count illegal immigrants, many of whom are working within the black economy which is estimated to be worth £50billion a year.
Statisticians plan to use the census, which can measure the foreign-born population including illegals, and a huge new database they are creating this winter to track legal migrants within the UK by using their tax files and hospital and school records.
In late December the ONS will receive all legal migrants’ tax files by the HMRC for the first time, followed by their self-assessment data early next year, which will enable statisticians to track their movements and working patterns in unprecedented detail and in real-time. ONS officials believe combining the two could provide a way to give an accurate figure for illegal immigration for the first time.
Previous unofficial estimates have suggested there are up to 1.1 million illegal immigrants in the UK, comprising visa overstayers, clandestine arrivals and failed asylum seekers.
The Commons home affairs committee warned earlier this year that the long-standing lack of any official analysis of the scale and nature of illegal immigration had allowed anxiety over the issue to grow unchecked – and called for publication of an annual estimate. The MPS warned it was helping fuel hostility towards migrants and undermining the credibility of the UK’S immigration enforcement system.
A previous estimate for the Home Office in 2005 suggested there were 430,000 illegal immigrants. A similar analysis by the London School of Economics in 2009 estimated it at 618,000.
Last year, David Wood, former head of immigration enforcement at the home office said more than one million illegal immigrants were at large in Britain and most were unlikely ever to be removed. “It is very difficult because, by their very nature, illegal immigrants don’t want to be found,” an ONS source said.
The new database, based on up to three million legal migrants’ tax files and other data, will enable officials to monitor where they are, what they are doing, their impact on the labour market, the tax they are paying, benefits they are claiming and their wages.
Jay Lindop, ONS deputy director of the centre for international migration, said: “This [data] will provide the best evidence base to inform policy decisions and services such as healthcare, housing and education.” The ONS has in the past relied on the International Passenger Survey, which asks travellers at ports and airports questions on where they are from, why they are in the UK and how long they might be staying.
But it is notoriously inaccurate in showing what migrants do in Britain and only provides data after they have left. The ONS’S use of people’s tax files, hospital admissions and school data to track and count the population is a model that is expected to be applied in censuses after 2021, alongside greater use of online data collection.