Two-thirds of all so-called unauthorised immigrants in Europe live in just four member states, and by one count there are more illegals in the United Kingdom than any other EU nation, according to new research.

Estimates of the number of illegals living in Europe in 2017, the most recent year for which figures are available, put the number at between 3.9 and 4.8 million people. Yet despite the freedom of movement between European nations, the vast majority — 70 per cent — of these illegals live in four countries, and half live in just two, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Both nations share a roughly equivalent estimated number of illegals, with the higher-end estimate at 1.2 million apiece, yet the demographics of the two nations are quite different. While German illegal migrants are more likely to be recent arrivals and from the Middle East than average, in the UK they are more likely to be long-term illegals and from the Asia-Pacific region.

The figures from the Pew Research Centre show the number of illegals — what the report calls unauthorised immigrants — has risen steeply since 2014, reaching a peak in 2016.

While this number has fallen slightly from the peak of as many as 5.3 million in 2016 during the high-tide mark of the Europe migrant crisis, the slight fall will be down only in a very small part to illegals leaving the continent for other parts of the globe. More impactful is the converting of unauthorised migrants as counted in the study into authorised or legal ones, by recognising their asylum claims or, as Pew cites is the case in France, by permitting citizenship after a certain period in the country as an illegal.

Because many migrants who are applying for asylum have temporary legal recognition — even if they entered the European Union or their eventual host nation illegally — the Pew research document also provides figures for illegal resident populations of European nations without asylum seekers counted. By this measure, the United Kingdom is by far the greatest home for illegals in Europe, with up to 1.2 million estimated, compared to 700,000 in Germany.

Responding to the Pew figures, Alp Mehmet, Chairman of Migration Watch UK, said: “These estimates are a wake-up call to whoever forms the next government and they show why 77% of voters see illegal immigration as a serious problem.

“As removals of those with no right to be here plummet, and as even border force staff lambast port security as ‘resourced to fail’, it is time politicians took the action that is desperately needed to deal with an issue that has long required urgent attention.”

Immigration as a topic has hardly featured in the 2019 UK general election campaign as an issue, with the Conservative attack on Labour’s policy of open borders being totally undermined by their own appalling track record on immigration. The party has persistently failed to control Britain’s borders with any sort of competency, despite repeatedly promising to bring immigration down in subsequent election manifestos.

The sudden and significant migrant flux to Europe in recent years has made a significant demographic impact on several European Countries — not just in Germany and Britain where large numbers of arrivals have been absorbed by already significant native populations, but also in less populous countries where comparatively small numbers of arrivals have had a disproportionate impact, such as Sweden.

In Germany, a quarter of all residents now have a ‘migration background’, meaning having at least one parent born overseas. This figure is set to rise as older generations die off and are replaced by younger generations which are much more diverse — 42 per cent of children under six in West Germany now have a migration background.

The picture is similar in the United Kingdom, where an estimated 82 per cent of population growth this century has been driven by migrants and their descendants. More than 600,000 migrants entered the United Kingdom in 2018, equivalent to the arrival of a whole regional capital city.

In Sweden, nearly one-fifth of all people living in the country were born abroad, the number of foreign residents and citizens having doubled this century alone. The sheer volume of arrivals in proportion to the existing population has driven historically high levels of population growth in the Nordic nation in recent years.