World War II In the lead-up to
World War II, many people from
Germany, particularly those belonging to minorities which were persecuted under
Nazi rule, such as
Jews, sought to emigrate to the United Kingdom, and it is estimated that as many as 50,000 may have been successful. There were immigration caps on the number who could enter, and, subsequently, some applicants were turned away. When the UK declared
war on Germany, however, migration between the countries ceased. During the Second World War, an estimated 10,000 West Indian men came to the UK. They were the first non-white group to settle in large numbers, and whilst two-thirds of them were repatriated after the war, returning ex-servicemen formed the majority of passengers who arrived on the Empire Windrush in 1948. At the end of the Second World War, substantial groups of people from
Soviet-controlled territories settled in the UK, particularly
Poles and
Ukrainians. The UK recruited displaced people as so-called European Volunteer Workers in order to provide labour to industries that were required in order to aid economic recovery after the war. In the
1951 United Kingdom census, the Polish-born population of the country numbered some 162,339, up from 44,642 in 1931. There was also an influx of refugees from
Hungary, following the crushing of the
1956 Hungarian revolution, numbering 20,990 people.
Empire to Commonwealth Following the end of the
Second World War, the
British Nationality Act 1948 allowed the 800,000,000 This migration was initially encouraged to help fill gaps in the UK
labour market for both skilled and unskilled jobs, including in public services such as the newly created
National Health Service and
London Transport. Many people were specifically brought to the UK on ships, notably the '
Empire Windrush' in 1948. The
Ireland Act 1949 has the unusual status of recognising the
Republic of Ireland, but affirming that its citizens are not citizens of a foreign country for the purposes of any law in the United Kingdom. This act was initiated at a time when Ireland withdrew from the
Commonwealth of Nations after declaring itself a republic.
Commonwealth immigration, made up largely of
economic migrants, rose from 3,000 per year in 1953 to 46,800 in 1956 and 136,400 in 1961. The heavy numbers of migrants resulted in the establishment of a Cabinet committee in June 1950 to find 'ways which might be adopted to check the immigration into this country of
coloured people from
British colonial territories'. Following the independence of
Pakistan, Pakistani immigration to the United Kingdom increased, especially during the 1950s and 1960s. Many Pakistanis came to Britain following the turmoil during the
partition of India and the subsequent independence of Pakistan. Among them were those who migrated to Pakistan upon displacement from India, and then emigrated to the UK, thus becoming secondary migrants. Migration was made easier as Pakistan was a member of the
Commonwealth of Nations. Pakistanis were invited by employers to fill labour shortages which arose after the Second World War. As Commonwealth citizens, they were eligible for most British civic rights. They found employment in the textile industries of
Lancashire and
Yorkshire, manufacturing in the
West Midlands, and car production and food processing industries of
Luton and
Slough. It was common for Pakistanis to work night shifts and unsociable hours. In addition, there was a
stream of migrants from
East Pakistan, now
Bangladesh. In the 1970s, a large number of East African-Asians, most of whom already held
British passports because they had been
British subjects settled in the overseas colonies, entered the United Kingdom from
Kenya and
Uganda, particularly as a result of the
expulsion of Asians from Uganda by
Idi Amin in 1972. A majority of the Pakistani immigrants to UK trace their origin to
Mirpur district in the region presently called
Azad Kashmir.
Restrictions on immigration from the Commonwealth Although the Committee recommended not to introduce restrictions, the
Commonwealth Immigrants Act was passed in 1962 as a response to public sentiment that the new arrivals "should return to their own countries" and that "no more of them come to this country". Introducing the legislation to the
House of Commons, the
Conservative Home Secretary Rab Butler stated: The new Act required migrants to have a job before they arrived, to possess special skills or who would meet the 'labour needs' of the national economy. In 1965, to combat the perceived injustice in the case where the wives of British subjects could not obtain British nationality, the British Nationality Act 1965 was adopted. Shortly afterwards, mainly Asian British passport holders from
Kenya and
Uganda, fearing discrimination from their own national governments, began to arrive in Britain; as they had retained their British nationality granted by the 1948 Act, they were not subject to the later controls. To manage this exodus from the former
East African colonies, the Home Secretary
James Callaghan under a
Labour party government introduced a bill in February 1968, and got it passed within a week. The new act called
Commonwealth Immigrants Act placed entry controls on holders of British passports who had 'no substantial connection' with Britain by setting up a new system. For the first time, the 1968 Act required migrants to have a 'substantial connection with the United Kingdom', namely to be connected by birth or ancestry to a UK national. Those who did not could only obtain British nationality at the discretion of the national authorities. The Conservative MP
Enoch Powell had campaigned hard for tighter controls on immigration. On 20 April 1968, one month after the adoption of the Act, he made his famous '
Rivers of Blood' speech, in which he warned his audience of what he believed would be the consequences of continued unchecked immigration from the Commonwealth to Britain.
Conservative Party leader Edward Heath sacked Powell from his Shadow Cabinet the day after the speech, and he never held another senior political post. Powell received 110,000 letters only 2,300 disapproving. Three days after the speech, on 23 April, as the Race Relations Bill was being debated in the
House of Commons, around 2,000 dockers walked off the job to march on Westminster protesting against Powell's dismissal. The next day, 400 meat porters from Smithfield market handed in a 92-page petition in support of Powell. At that time, 43% of junior doctors working in NHS hospitals, and some 30% of student nurses, were immigrants, without which the health service would needed to have been curtailed. The rules proposal drew criticism from Conservative Party
backbenchers, because it formally implemented a limit of six months of leave to enter as a visitor for white '
Old Commonwealth' citizens who were 'non-patrial' (did not have
Right of Abode under the 1971 act, generally because they did not have a parent or grandparent from the UK). In 1998, the Commonwealth immigration rate surged to 82,000 and peaked at 156,000 in 2004. The
British Nationality Act 1981, which was enacted in 1983, distinguishes between British citizens and
British Overseas Territories citizens. It also made a distinction between nationality 'by descent' and nationality 'other than by descent'. Citizens by descent cannot automatically pass on British nationality to a child born outside the United Kingdom or its Overseas Territories (though in some situations the child can be registered as a citizen). Immigration officers have to be satisfied with a person's nationality and identity, and entry can be refused if they are not satisfied. During the 1980s and 1990s, the
civil war in
Somalia led to a large number of Somali immigrants, comprising the majority of the current
Somali population in the UK. In the late 1980s, most of these early migrants were granted asylum, while those arriving later in the 1990s more often obtained temporary status. There has also been some secondary migration of Somalis to the UK from the
Netherlands and
Denmark. The main driving forces behind this secondary migration included a desire to reunite with family and friends and for better employment opportunities. Non-European immigration rose significantly during the period from 1997, not least because of the
government's abolition of the primary purpose rule in June 1997. This change made it easier for UK residents to bring foreign spouses into the country. The former government adviser Andrew Neather in the '
Evening Standard' stated that the deliberate policy of ministers from late 2000 until early 2008 was to open up the UK to mass immigration.
Impact of EU enlargement One of the
Four Freedoms of the
European Union (EU), of which the United Kingdom is a former member, is the right to the free movement of workers as codified in the
Directive 2004/38/EC and the
EEA Regulations (UK). With the expansion of the EU on 1 May 2004, the UK accepted immigrants from
Central and
Eastern Europe,
Malta and
Cyprus, although the substantial Maltese,
Greek-Cypriot and
Turkish-Cypriot communities were established earlier through their Commonwealth connection. There were restrictions on the benefits that members of eight of these accession countries ('A8' nationals) could claim, which were covered by the
Worker Registration Scheme. Many other European Union member states exercised their right to temporary immigration control, which ended in 2011, over entrants from these accession states, but some subsequently removed these restrictions ahead of the 2011 deadline. The Government announced that the same rules would not apply to nationals of
Romania and
Bulgaria (A2 nationals) when those countries acceded to the EU in 2007. Instead, restrictions were put in place to limit migration to
students, the self-employed, highly skilled migrants and food and agricultural workers. Research conducted by the
Migration Policy Institute for the
Equality and Human Rights Commission suggests that, between May 2004 and September 2009, 1.5 million workers migrated from the new EU member states to the UK, but that many returned home, with the result that the number of nationals of the new member states in the UK increased by some 700,000 over the same period. In 2009, for the first time since the enlargement, more nationals of the eight Central and Eastern European states that joined the EU in 2004 left the UK than arrived. Research commissioned by the Regeneration and Economic Development Analysis Expert Panel suggested migrant workers leaving the UK due to the recession were likely to return in the future and cited evidence of "strong links between initial temporary migration and intended permanent migration". A report by the
Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) entitled 'International Migration and Rural Economies', suggested that intra-EU migration since enlargement had resulted in migrants settling in rural locations without a prior history of immigration. In June 2010, the newly elected
Coalition government brought in a temporary annual cap onthe Tier 2 visa route, which was part of the points-based-system that administered non-EU immigration to the UK from outside the EU, with the limit set as 24,100, in order to stop an expected rush of applications before a permanent annual cap of 20,700 for immigrants using the Tier 2 visa route, primarily those applying for jobs that were not on the Shortage Occupation List. The annual cap was imposed in April 2011; accompanying family members and immigrants earning £150,000 (later rising to nearly £160,000) were not counted within the 20,700 annual cap. The Tier 1 visa route was closed for new applicants. The monthly allocation was only first reached in June 2015, more than four years after its introduction, and was only reached again in December 2017 and subsequently each month until July 2018 when the government exempted doctors and nurses from the annual cap on 6 July 2018. The annual cap was never reached again. The annual cap only applied to a small segment of immigration from outside the EU. The annual cap did not apply to foreign students (Tier 4), dependents of foreign students and foreign workers, foreign nationals immigrating via marrying a British citizen or a foreign national with indefinite leave to remain in the UK, intra-company transfers, temporary workers (Tier 5), and immigrants that were in the UK switching from other visa categories to Tier 2. The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) first reported in 2008, identifying skilled occupations with labour shortages to support the UK's Points-Based System and producing shortage occupation lists to guide employer recruitment of migrants. In February 2011, the
Leader of the Labour Party,
Ed Miliband, stated that he thought that the Labour government's decision to permit the unlimited immigration of eastern European migrants had been a mistake, arguing that they had underestimated the potential number of migrants and that the scale of migration had had a negative impact on wages. The annual cap was suspended when the Tier 2 visa route was replaced by the Skilled Worker visa on 1 December 2020, as part of the UK's post-Brexit points-based immigration system. The result was a massive surge in non-EU+ immigration, which has since dominated immigration to the UK. In the Office for National Statistics' provisional November 2025 estimate for the year ending (YE) June 2025, non-EU+ nationals accounted for 75% of total immigration, 670,000 immigrants out of the total 898,000 immigrants. In 2021, net migration to the UK was 488,000, However, following the introduction of the post-Brexit points-based immigration system on 1 January 2021 under the second Conservative government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, net migration is estimated to have reached a record high of 944,000 in year ending (YE) March 2023, with immigration at 1,469,000 and emigration at 525,000. Writing in the centre-left magazine
New Statesman, Rachel Cunliffe explained, "Unfortunately for those who had anticipated that the introduction of a such a system would bring down overall numbers, given Johnson had also promised to get net migration down, the opposite happened. A quick look at these graphs helpfully provided by the Office for National Statistics shows how dramatically immigration spiked after the new rules were introduced: inwards migration went from 737,000 people in year ending June 2021, to 1.1 million for year ending June 2022, 1.32 million for year ending June 2023." In May 2025, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer introduced new rules on immigration, claiming they would significantly reduce net migration to approximately 100,000 annually. Key measures include extending the residency requirement for citizenship from five to ten years, phasing out the recruitment of foreign care workers by 2028, increasing the immigration skills charge for employers by 32%, shortening the post-graduation work period for international students from two years to 18 months, tightening English language requirements for visa applicants and their adult dependents, and proposing legislation to limit asylum seekers' use of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights to streamline deportations. However, the OBR forecasted in November 2025 that net migration will rise to 327,000 in 2029 and 340,000 in 2030, "as the latest evidence suggests immigrant stay rates in the UK under the new migration system have risen more than we assumed in March".
Resettlement schemes The UK also operates the UK Resettlement Scheme, Community Sponsorship Scheme and Mandate Resettlement Scheme. Previous UK resettlement schemes included the
Gateway Protection Programme and the
Syrian Vulnerable Person Resettlement Programme. As of 30 June 2025, approximately 35,700 people had been resettled in the UK under the specific Afghan relocation and resettlement schemes (ARAP, ACRS, and ARR) since the August 2021 withdrawal. In 2021 the government also launched a
scheme for Hongkongers following the
Hong Kong national security law, with an estimated thousands emigrating to the UK either as refugees, asylum seekers or under student visas. By January 2024, more than 191,000 Hong Kong-born residents had applied for a visa. In response to the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the UK in 2022 created multiple special humanitarian visas for Ukrainians. As of 31 March 2025, 223,000 people had arrived in the UK via the Homes for Ukraine (165,000 people), now closed Ukraine Family Scheme (58,000 people), though over 40% (93,000 people) have left since arriving. ==Illegal immigration and asylum==