Migrants from outside the European Union (EU) were handed residence permits to live in Britain at the rate of one every 36 seconds last year, new data has revealed.
During 2016, the UK granted 865,894 non-EU migrants the right to stay in the country, marking a 52 per cent rise from the previous year, according to figures published by Eurostat.
The number makes up a quarter of all residence permits that were issued across Europe, according to the data, which shows Britain handed out more than any other nation.
Of migrants who were given permits to live in the UK, 21 per cent of those recorded were U.S. citizens while 14 per cent came from India and 12 per cent from China.
Most EU nations have a system in which residence permits allow migrants from outside Europe to stay in the country legally. Because the UK lacks an exact parallel to this, Eurostat counts work, study and family visas — excluding visas given to tourists — as the nearest comparison.
Behind Britain in the charts for residence permits granted were Poland with 586,00o, Germany with 505,000 and France with 235,000.
The top nationality among non-EU migrants granted the right to stay in Poland were Ukrainians, who made up 88 per cent of the total, while five per cent were from Belarus and one per cent from Moldova.
While Poland has been relentlessly attacked in the international media and by Brussels as hostile to refugees, for their refusal to house a quota of illegal immigrants from the third world, the nation has taken in more than a million migrants from neighbouring Ukraine since 2014 when conflict broke out.
Ukrainians also topped the list of nationalities given residence permits in Poland’s fellow Visegrad nations Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
The Eurostat data was published ahead of UK migration figures next week, the latest of which showed net migration standing at 246,000 in the year to March.
Alp Mehmet, Migration Watch UK, said: “Assuming a good many people stay in the country indefinitely, this is another damning indication of the levels of migration that are taking place.
“This is why we have the pressure we do on public services.
“The consequence is people will need homes, their children will need school places, and it will put more demand on public services.”
As Breitbart London previously reported, the migration policy think tank last week accused successive governments of misleading the public over the impact of mass immigration on Britain’s housing crisis, revealing in a report that migrants made up nine in ten new households over the last decade .