Britain allows more people from outside the EU to enter for work or study than any other member state.
One in four of the 2.3 million residency permits given to citizens from elsewhere in the world by EU countries last year was issued by Britain, according to Eurostat, the EU statistics organisation.
The UK issued 177,000 study permits, including 63,000 to Chinese citizens, making it the most popular EU destination for education. More than a third of permits issued for study in the EU were handed out by the UK, according to Eurostat. A further 116,707 were granted to people coming for work and 96,501 came for family reasons.
Madeleine Sumption, director of the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory, said: “These figures confirm that the UK is still a very attractive destination for international students.”
Residence permits are issued by many EU states to migrants who have been settled in a country for a period of time and wish to stay legally. The UK does not issue such permits so the Eurostat figures are based on visas, being the nearest equivalent.