Number of Romanian-Born in England and Wales Soars 576 Per Cent in Just Ten Years

A woman wearing traditional clothes attends a ceremony celebrating Romania's National
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Oliver JJ Lane

The number of people who are day-to-day residents of England and Wales who were born in Romania has seen an enormous increase in the past ten years, rising a remarkable 576 per cent.

The UK government’s statistical bureau, the Office for National Statistics, released a tranche of census data Wednesday, revealing the state of the nation as it was in March 2021, allowing comparison with previous data from other censuses in 2011 and 2001. While mass migration has wrought huge changes in England and Wales over the past ten years, one stand-out statistic is the sudden surge of people born in Romania living in England and Wales.

While there were an estimated 80,000 people born in Romania in England and Wales in 2011, the latest census puts the new figure at 539,000, a staggering rise of 576 per cent. While Romania wasn’t even close to the top ten sources for foreign-born residents in 2011, the rapid growth has catapulted the nation to the number four spot, after India, Poland, and Pakistan.

The sudden growth in Romanians in this ten-year period can be explained, to some extent, by the fact it covers the admission of Romania to the European Union’s common travel area in 2014. The opening of the United Kingdom’s borders to Romania — the UK was then, of course, an EU member state — was a matter of huge political discussion, with considerable controversy over comments made by Nigel Farage.

The then-UKIP leader Farage warned the opening of the borders would see a sudden surge in migrant arrivals from Romania, and he was pilloried twice over those remarks, once for having the temerity to say it, and a second time when the mass arrivals didn’t seem to immediately materialise. Yet, Farage seems to have been vindicated by today’s figures.

The distribution of new migrants across the United Kingdom has not been equal, however. London is 40 per cent non-UK born, according to the census, with some neighbourhoods including Westminster having over 50 per cent of its population foreign-born. You would be more likely to bump into British-born people in the street in other parts of the country, however, with just 2.8 per cent of residents in Northumberland born abroad.

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