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More Eastern Europeans leaving UK More Eastern Europeans leaving UK
(30 minutes later)
The number of Eastern Europeans leaving the UK doubled in the year up to September 2008, officials have said.The number of Eastern Europeans leaving the UK doubled in the year up to September 2008, officials have said.
The Office for National Statistics said that the total number of foreign nationals leaving the UK during the same period rose by almost a third. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said that more foreign nationals left during the same 12 months than compared with the previous year.
Overall immigration of foreign nationals remains broadly unchanged. The population is still growing from migration - but the rate has slowed because of the numbers now leaving.
The figures show the UK population is still growing from migration - but the rate has slowed significantly because of the number of people now leaving. Home Office figures show there was a 27% rise in asylum seekers, but the total is well below record levels.
Separate Home Office figures show that there was a rise in the number of asylum seekers between January and March 2009 - while the removal of failed applicants fell. Over the first three months of 2009, there were 8,380 asylum applications, the highest number since 2004.
While this represents a significant increase, it is below the record levels of approximately 25,000 arrivals every quarter in 2002.
Registered workers
The ONS says that over the year to last September, 720,000 National Insurance Numbers were issued to foreign nationals - down 7% on the previous year.
The ONS said the "key factor" in the fall in National Insurance registrations was the decline in applications from eight Eastern European nations.
It said that 265,000 of the National Insurance numbers went to these nationals in the year to September - a fall of 71,000 registrations on the previous year.
Over the same period, the government recorded 180,000 Eastern Europeans joining the Worker Registration Scheme, a means of counting their presence in the UK.
That was down from 223,000 registrations between September 2006 and September 2008. The most recent provisional figures show that registrations are continuing to fall, said the ONS.