Immigration in UK has given a way to rise in population.

The office of National Immigration revealed that Britain’s population has reached record levels and the biggest contributor towards this has been immigration.

The trend implies that by the end of 2060, Britain will be the most populous country in Europe.

The population of UK has risen by more than 2 million since 2001 and it population has reached to 60,975,000 people. In fact, in the past year only, 605,000 long-term immigrants, who stay for more than one year, moved to Britain. This is 21 percent more than the number that was recorded in the year 2001.

Long-term emigration also reached a record high this year with more than 406,000 people moving out of the country for a period of more than one year. Many British nationals are now moving to Australia, Spain, New Zealand and Canada in order to find a new lifestyle and different, better job opportunities.

Due to the rising birth rate and record immigration, the UK population rose to almost 61 million by mid-2007, as there was a rise in fertility levels and previous migrants had babies.

Immigration has been the most important factor in increasing the population in recent years and with millions of immigrants starting families, the birth rate is rising fast. It is estimated that almost a quarter of new born babies in Britain are now born to immigrant mothers. And this is increasing rapidly. In fact, this figure in London is 54 percent and even 75 percent in some boroughs.

Foreign-born mothers have 2.54 children on an average, whereas for mothers born in the UK, it is only 1.79. In many cases, if a child is born in the UK and if one parent holds a UK passport then he or she acquires automatic citizenship, however, rules are complex. In case the child parents have settled in Britain legally, then the children can get British citizenship within a few years.

At present, there are more than 6.3 million people in the UK who were born abroad, which is well over 10 percent of the current population and 1.1 million more than what it was in 2004. Polish workers comprise of almost one-third of that increase. Last year, just over 400,000 residents of the UK moved out to live in other country, which still resulted in a net inward migration of more than 200,000 people in the UK.