WESTMINSTER, United Kingdom – One in four children born last year in the UK had a foreign-born mother, according to the government's Office for National Statistics. The figures bring into focus the huge increase in immigration that began after the last Labour government took office in 1997.
That year 13 percent of babies were born to a mother who was herself born overseas, compared to 27 percent in 2014. In addition to allowing large numbers of asylum seekers into the country around half a billion people have the right to settle in the UK as a result of European Union rules on free movement of labor.
Any citizen of a European Union country can settle in the UK and claim welfare checks in the same way as the British. The right extends to a number of countries that were members of the Soviet Union, and yet more that were communist allies of the USSR through the Warsaw Pact. Most of them have average family incomes of less than $10k compared to an average UK family income of nearly $40k.
The most populace of these countries in Poland and consequently it topped the poll of where the foreign mothers of babies came from. The country accounted for 3 percent of all children born in the UK.
Aside from the EU, the largest number of foreign mothers came from the Indian subcontinent. This group made up nearly 6 percent of all mothers in the country last year. Pakistan was the largest contributor with 2.7 percent of all mothers having been born in the country compared with 2 percent from India itself and 1.1 percent from Bangladesh.
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Alp Mahmet from the Migration Watch pressure group said: “These official figures support what we have been saying for some time – Britain's population growth is being driven by immigration increases and babies born to non-UK mothers.
“Clearly the longer population grows the greater the volume of people in the country. It doesn't take a genius to work out that it will put pressure on a whole range of services including schools, housing and hospitals. It is unsustainable.
“This sort of population growth is going to lead to a population of 70 million more quickly than we thought, in the main because of immigration.”
Last year 400,000 immigrants settled in the UK, pushing the population to nearly 65 million, the highest it has ever been. The soaring population is already putting pressure on infrastructure.
The housing shortage is now so acute that the average price of a residential property is $425k, rising to $800k in London. These levels make it all but impossible for British young people to buy homes, rents are also pushed up because penniless immigrant families can claim their rent from the taxpayer.
During the Labour Party's term of office from 1997 to 2010 a total of 3.6 million immigrants were allowed to settle in the UK. They arrived in Britain at the rate of almost one every minute during the period, leading to it acquiring the nickname 'the open door years'.
The current government has put curbs on immigration, but this has done little to quell overall numbers because it can only clamp down on non-EU countries. So qualified professional
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