Britiske ministre har varslet at fem separate, hittil ukjente rapporter om innvandringen til Storbritannia vil bli offentliggjort de nærmeste dagene. Rapportene, som til sammen kostet skattebetalerne 165.000 pund, ble bestilt av den daværende Labour-regjeringen, men ble ikke publisert ettersom de fem rapportenes konklusjoner sto i motstrid til Labour-regjeringens førte innvandringspolitikk og påstander om samme. Labours innvandringspolitikk har blant annet ført til at mer enn en tredjedel av Londons nåværende befolkning er født utenfor Storbritannia.

Minstre anklager Labour for «bekymringsfull cover up» ved å begrave rapportene, hvor det bla heter at innvandrere fra alle land har større sannsynlighet enn innfødte for å ende i arbeidsledighet og at mer enn 15 prosent av innvandrerne fra Bulgaria og Romania lever av offentlige velferdsytelser:

The figures are contained in five separate controversial studies commissioned by the last Labour government but never published – amid claims the party wanted to avoid a damaging row about its record before last year’s general election.

Ministers accused Labour of a “disturbing cover up” and promised to publish the reports – which cost the taxpayer a total of £165,000 and have now been seen by The Sunday Telegraph – in full within days.

The documents also contain revelations that immigrants from all countries into Britain are more likely to be out of work than the native population – and are less likely to engage in any form of “civic participation.”

More than one third of London’s population, moreover, has now been born outside the UK.

De offentliggjorte rapportene vil igjen sette søkelyset på Labours kontroversielle innvandringspolitikk:

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, used a weekend interview to admit the party had “got things wrong” on the issue.

Up until 2008 the Labour government was criticised for effectively operating an “open door” policy which saw a massive rise in the number of visas, work permits and extended residency being granted.

Gordon Brown’s government then introduced a new “points based” system which was designed to make it harder for non-skilled people to come to Britain from outside the European Union.

However, particular controversy surrounded the rules governing immigration from countries which joined the EU during the first decade of this century – which included Bulgaria and Romania (which joined in 2007) and Poland (2004).

Labour ministers repeatedly promised that restrictions would be placed on those coming in from Eastern Europe in order to “manage” numbers and protect jobs for British workers.

However, the secret reports show that 27 per cent of people coming from Bulgaria and Romania had “low education levels” while as of 2009 more than 15 per cent of them were claiming out-of-work benefits.

The documents, commissioned by the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) reveal that immigrants from the two countries are more likely to claim unemployment-related benefits than either non-immigrants or other migrant groups in Britain.

A report said that despite the implementation of a “cap” on numbers, the migration rate into Britain from Romania and Bulgaria increased significantly after the countries joined the EU in 2007.

Samtidig viser rapportene at innvandrere fra de to landene i større utstrekning enn andre innvandrere har fire eller flere barn, noe som har lagt et betydelig press på det britisk utdanningssystemet; særlig i London hvor over halvparten av bulgarerne og rumenerne er bosatt.

En av de fem rapportene som tar for seg sosiale og økonomiske faktorer ved innvandringen av bulgarske og rumenske statsborgere viser at mens Bulgarias og Romanias befolkning sank mellom 2004 og 2010, var det en betydelig økning av Storbritannias befolkning. I samme periode sank også arbeidsledigheten i de to landene, mens den økte i Storbritannia.

Another report on overall immigration, The Socio-Economic Integration of Migrants, claimed: “Immigrants in the UK exhibit lower employment rates than natives….Immigrants are on average less likely than natives to engage in any form civic participation.”

A further document, Drivers of International Migration, stated: “The increase in immigration into the UK since the mid 1990s is entirely explained by a rise in the number of foreign-born people migrating to the UK from abroad, rather than by returning UK-born people.”

At the start of the 1980s the key annual “net immigration” figure for the UK was minus 42,000 – meaning tens of thousands more people left Britain every year than came here.

By 1992-95 this figure had gone up to plus 9,200 – while by the period between 2004 and 2007 it had mushroomed to plus 178,000 a year.

Britain’s population was slated to increase by more than four million to 65.6 million between 2008 and 2018, while by 2008 over one third of London’s population (34 per cent) was born outside Britain.

Grant Shapps, the Housing Minister, said: “This is another disturbing cover-up by a Labour Party that failed on immigration and then tried to bury the truth.

“‘This Government is bringing immigration under control to restore public confidence in the system left broken by Labour.”

The Coalition’s policy of putting an overall cap on immigrant numbers from outside the EU is designed to reduce net migration to Britain significantly.

David Cameron said in a speech in April that it should be “in the order of tens of thousands each year, not the hundreds of thousands every year that we have seen over the last decade.”

Damian Green, the Immigration Minister, said: “We have cut down on sham marriages, we have brought in a variety of policies which curb the number of people coming into the country and then overstay.

And we will continue to look at how we can further improve the balance between the people who at value coming into the country and those who do not.”

Labour’s record on immigration sparked bitter debates before last year’s election, exemplified by unguarded “bigoted woman” comments during the campaign by Mr Brown, on an open microphone, about Gillian Duffy, a Rochdale grandmother, when she questioned the former prime minister on it.

In an interview this weekend Ms Cooper admitted: «We did get things wrong on immigration.

«We should have had the transitional controls on migration from Eastern Europe. We should have introduced the points-based system much earlier.”

Bare i 2010 økte Storbritannias befolkning med 470.000 – den raskeste veksten på over 50 år. Den rekordhøye befolkningsveksten drives nå hovedsakelig av innvandring og innvandreres høye fødselsrater. Befolkningen i landet har økt med hele 3.1 millioner på bare ni år til 62.3 millioner mennesker, og det anslås at innvandrere står for 70 prosent av befolkningsveksten. Den raske veksten har alarmert immigrasjons- og miljøgrupper og har fremprovosert løfter fra koalisjonsregjeringen om å “fikse innvandringssystemet”. England er allerede blitt det tettest befolkede landet i Europa.

Dersom dagens vekst fortsetter, vil den britiske befolkningen nå det symbolske tallet 70 millioner – et tall den avgåtte Labour-regjeringen sa at aldri ville bli nådd – på bare 15 år.

Labour-regjeringen ble for øvrig anklaget for å «begrave sannheten om innvandring» i forbindelse med valget i 2010. Seks uker før valgkampen hadde regjeringen mottatt rapporten The Drivers of International Migration To and From the UK fra det høyt respekterte Nasjonalt institutt for økonomisk og sosial forskning, men besluttet å ikke offentliggjøre den 80-siders lange rapporten som kritiserte den førte innvandringspolitikken. Rapporten viste bla at nettoinnvandringen til Storbritannia hadde økt med 169.100 mennesker i året mellom 1992-1995 og 2004-2007 og at majoriteten av nyankomne kom fra asiatiske land.

The Telegraph: Labour’s embarrassing immigration secrets revealed