EU: Britain to have 12m more migrants by 2060

Britain will have 12 million more migrants by the middle of this century, a report issued by the European Union’s statistics office has shown.

Brussels statistics agency Eurostat said the UK should brace itself for a population explosion with net immigration of 12,135,000 people between 2008 and 2060, adding that Germany and Spain are the only EU countries forecast to have higher net immigration than Britain.

According to the report by the group, several countries will have to deal with social changes in a few decades with the growing diversity of the European population being considered as a major socio-demographic challenge for the current century.
Separate figures released by Eurostat earlier this month showed that Britain has the fourth fastest-growing population in Europe, rising by 6.2 percent to a record 63.8 million last year.

The EU statistics office also said Britain has the second highest birth rate in the EU after Ireland.

Tory backbencher Anne Main raised concerns over the scale of immigration to the country, saying, “These figures are very worrying. We must learn the lessons after the huge mistakes made by the last Labour government, which totally failed to plan migration.”

According to the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), this comes as the British government’s plans to cut the number of migrants to the UK will have “strong negative effects” on the country’s economy over the next five decades.