The UK’s foreign-born population is set to top eight million for the first time in official figures to be published later this week, according to Oxford University experts.
Rising number of EU migrants arriving in Britain have helped push the number over the landmark figure, the university’s Migration Observatory said.
The report was released before official figures to be released on Thursday which could see net migration also reach an all time high.
It said the number of people living in the UK who were born abroad has increased each year for a decade and is on track to officially exceed 8 million for the first time.
But it said the 8 million threshold ‘is actually likely to have been crossed more than a year ago’ because there is a lag in the ONS’s figures.
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The Migration Observatory’s report said: “The number of UK residents in 2014 who were born abroad ... has increased steadily over time, and the current trend suggests that it is likely to exceed eight million for the first time in 2014.”
The figures show, however, that the rate of increase in the foreign-born population has slowed in recent years as government policies intended to reduce immigration have been introduced.
The report showed it took three years betweeen 2006-2009 for the foreign-born population to increase from six million to seven million but five years for it to increase from seven to eight million.
Madeleine Sumption, director of Migration Observatory, said: “The slowing down in the rate of increase is a result of the economic crisis which led to a relative slowdown in overall migration to the UK compared with average of the last ten years”
Ms Sumption said a number of measures including falls in the number of students coming to further education colleges and English language colleges plus an increase in the financial threshold for bringing spouses and family members into the UK were also likely to have effected the rate of growth.
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“It is very difficult to say what impact any of these measures has actually had but it is likely that without the policy measures in place we would have had a faster increase”.
The figures include all foreign-born people in the UK including British citizens born overseas, such as when their parents were based with British forces in western Germany and immigrants who have subsequently become UK citizens.
In 2013, 2.7m of the foreign-born were from the EU and 5.2m from elsewhere in the world and the figures show that the number born in the EU is making up a growing proportion of the total number of foreigners living in Britain.
Ms Sumption said:”Generally over the last ten years we have seen the share of the foreign born population born in the EU gradually increasing.
“It is extremely difficult to predict migration flows in the future but several factors could slow down the pace of EU migration to the UK.
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“If we have a much more robust economic recovery in the Eurozone and in the longer term a rise in the living standards in countries like Poland and elsewhere, then the numbers coming might slow down”.
Overall, the share of the British population born abroad is broadly in line with other countries in Europe, the report said.
In 2014, six countries had larger foreign-born shares of the population than Britain - including Austria, Ireland and Sweden. Nine other countries had smaller shares, including Italy, Portugal and Finland.
Alp Mehmet, vice chairman of Migration Watch UK, which campaigns for lower immigration, said: “This very rapid increase in our population is the direct consequence of Labour’s mass immigration which the coalition were unable to bring under control”
He added: “ It is no surprise, therefore, that we now have the highest ever level of public concern about immigration.
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The government must now get a grip of the student route which is the major avenue for non-EU migration. They must also renegotiate access to Britain by EU migrants, particularly those coming for low wage employment.”