Increase in number of passports handed to UK visa holders

February 26 2010 by Liam Clifford

There has been a 58% increase in the number of UK passports issued to immigrants living in the UK on UK visas. In 2009, a total of 203,865 people were granted British citizenship – an increase of more than half the number of new British citizens in 2008.

In spite of the recession, grants of settlement linked to jobs increased from 37,000 in 2007 to over 60,000 in 2008 and 81,000 in 2009.

There has been an even bigger increase in the number of UK student visas granted: in the last quarter of 2009, 61,715 student visas were issued, which is a massive 92% increase on the same period in 2008. Critics have queried the effectiveness of the new points-based UK immigration system for student visas.

Another pattern that has emerged from the data is a shift in the nationalities of the people moving to the UK. There was a 25% decline in the number of Polish citizens coming to work in the UK, whereas the number of migrant workers from Latvia and Lithuania more than doubled.

Critics have said UK immigration is "running out of control" and that the government should have been more discerning about issuing UK work visas during the recession. Ministers responded by pointing out that asylum applications have hit their lowest level since the early 1990s.

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