What country, friends, is this?

September 9, 2005 8:57 AM

Born abroad. 7.5% of the UK's population was born outside the UK and Ireland. This fascinating mini-site from the BBC shows where they all came from, and where they live now. Immigration has been a hot-button issue in UK politics for a while now. In Scotland, they want more immigrants. In England, at least on the right, they want far fewer. The conservative right hate Europe, and hate immigration. Perhaps we'd better not tell them that Germans are the third-largest immigrant group (India and Pakistan at 1 and 2), while the USA-icans languish in 5th.
posted by athenian (7 comments total)

Oh what chaos will be caused if Quadaffi creates is "United States of Africa"!
posted by delmoi at 11:20 AM on September 9, 2005

The Irish are the largest group (500,000). I'm not sure exactly why they're not included
posted by ZippityBuddha at 11:21 AM on September 9, 2005

Scotland really wants more immigrants? Do they need I.T. people? I'm interested and i'm serious!
posted by spock at 12:25 PM on September 9, 2005

They really do. I was at a Scottish business conference just today (this is posted from the Edinburgh-London train) and the First Minister saying that they need lots and lots of high-skilled immigrants.
posted by athenian at 12:30 PM on September 9, 2005

I got my visa (spousal) a few weeks ago. But I can't get residency unless I stay for two years - and my scholarship is only for one. If my husband doesn't find a job, we'll have to come back to North America. I really would like British citizenship - I think they should give me points for studying British history. Like, if I know more about British history and geography than 98% of British citizens (which might be true :)

I did have a weird/annoying moment when a professor tried to insist that Britain was more multicultural than Canada. Something like 17% of Canadians are born abroad.
posted by jb at 1:02 AM on September 11, 2005

Here are the numbers for Canada. A few days ago I was going to make a comment something like: "So living in England is like living in Regina?".
posted by Chuckles at 7:03 PM on September 12, 2005

Not a bad guess then?

Foreign born doesn't always mean visible minority, of course. A non-white friend of mine was shocked to find out that visible minorities (not white or aboriginal) were only something like 9% of the Canadian population, as she grew up in Toronto (much higher). StatsCan doesn't seem to have the same proportion by metro area for visible minority, but it does have the raw numbers here.
posted by jb at 11:05 PM on September 12, 2005