by Selina O'Grady and Biodun Iginla, Reuters contributors and BBC News, London
1 hour ago
Net migration to the UK reached 318,000 last year - the highest total for a decade, new figures show.
The Office for National Statistics said this was a "statistically significant" rise of more than 109,000 from 2013.
There were increases in both EU and non-EU migration, with the total figure close to 2005's all-time high.
It
comes as the Conservatives unveil new plans to seize the wages of
illegal workers as proceeds of crime in an attempt to reduce the
numbers.
Prime Minister David Cameron will say it has become "too
easy" for migrants not entitled to be in the country to exploit
loopholes.
At the moment, firms can be fined up to £20,000 for employing illegal workers.
However,
the scale of the challenge facing ministers in reducing levels of legal
immigration has been highlighted again by the new
official figures on net migration.
The
figures measure the difference between the numbers of people moving the
UK for a year or more and those leaving the UK for a year or more.
They reveal:
- 641,000 people moved to the UK over the period, with 323,000 going the other way
- 284,000 people immigrated for work, a 70,000 increase
- The number of Romanian and Bulgarians moving to the UK doubled to 46,000 in 2014
- Employment of non-British EU nationals in the UK in January to March 2015 was 283,000 higher than the previous year
The Conservatives pledged before the 2010 election to reduce
numbers to less than 100,000, a target they acknowledge they have failed
to meet.
"There is no good news here for David Cameron," said BBC assistant political editor Norman Smith.
He
said ministers were shifting the emphasis of the immigration debate
away from numbers towards "blue collar concerns" like jobs, pay and
housing.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Home Secretary
Theresa May said immigration in the tens of thousands remained the
government's "aim".
"It's the ambition that we have set out in our manifesto," she said.
Setting out how the target could be met, she said the Conservative
government would "do some things that we wanted to do previously but we
weren't able to do before because we were in coalition".
She also
said the reforms would not necessarily need more investment in police
and border services, saying they were about "making the system work
better".
Mr Cameron will see first-hand efforts to combat illegal
immigration on Thursday when he visits a premises in London shortly
after it has been raided by immigration officials.
He will say
the government is determined to "control and reduce" immigration, saying
criminalising illegal workers must go hand-in-hand with other measures
to lower demand for migrant labour, such as boosting the skills of UK
workers.
The government says depriving illegal migrants of their wages will make it harder for them to remain in the UK.
A
new criminal offence of illegal working will apply to migrants who have
entered the country illegally and also those who came to the country
legally but are in breach of their conditions or have overstayed.
At
the moment, migrants with current leave to remain who are working
illegally in breach of their conditions may be prosecuted and are
liable, if convicted, to a six months' custodial sentence and-or an
unlimited fine.
But migrants who entered the UK illegally or have
overstayed their leave are not subject to the same sanctions, and the
police do not have the same powers of confiscation in all cases.
'Less attractive'
Mr
Cameron will say that "making Britain a less attractive place to come
and work illegally" is a crucial part of a fair immigration policy -
adding that a "strong country is one that controls immigration... not
one that pulls up the drawbridge".
"The truth is it has been too easy to work illegally and employ illegal workers here," he will say in a speech in London.
"So we'll take a radical step - we'll make illegal working a criminal offence in its own right.
"That means wages paid to illegal migrants will be seized as proceeds
of crime… and businesses will be told when their workers' visas expire…
So if you're involved in illegal working - employer or employee -
you're breaking the law."
However, lawyer Saira Grant, director of
the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, questioned how the new
measure would be enforced.
"We're talking about people who're illegally here, working cash-in-hand below the radar," she said.
"Are
the wages going to be seized retrospectively? But more importantly we
are talking about very vulnerable people, with very little money as it
is, often supporting families."
She added that extending the
"deport first, appeal later" principle to all non-asylum cases, another
measure set to feature in a forthcoming immigration bill, would be
"extremely detrimental to access to justice".
Among other proposed
measures are new powers for councils to deal with unscrupulous
landlords and to evict illegal migrants more quickly, while all foreign
criminals awaiting deportation will be fitted with satellite tracking
tags.
It will also become an offence for businesses and
recruitment agencies to hire abroad without first advertising in the UK -
a policy which featured prominently in Labour's election manifesto.
'Tackling exploitation'
Ministers say the package builds on the progress made over the past
five years but critics say the Conservatives' tough rhetoric has not
been matched by action on the ground, either in tackling illegal
immigration or curbing legal immigration.
Labour welcomed the action but said it did not go far enough.
"A lot of this will look very familiar to anyone who read Labour's manifesto," shadow immigration minister David Hanson said.
"It
is clear the measures outlined here will not be sufficient to tackle
exploitation. There needs to be a clear offence of exploitation that
undercuts local jobs and wages, which the police and other experts have
called for."
Figures published in February showed that not only is
net migration 50,000 higher than when Mr Cameron came to power, but
even non-EU migration - which ministers had claimed to have brought
under control - has been increasing rapidly.
Don Flynn, of the
Migrants' Rights Network, said seizing wages would force some people
into "systems of modern slavery without hope of protection from the
law".
"Irregular migrants in the UK fit no one's image of a law-breaker living on the proceeds of crime," he said.
"Their
vulnerable status means they are confined to the most insecure and
exploitative forms of employment, usually earning scarcely enough to
maintain themselves on a day-to-day basis."
The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants said the measures would do nothing to ease the pressure on public services.
