GETTY Almost 568,000 non-Europeans were given the right to stay in Britain last year

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Almost 568,000 non-Europeans were given the right to stay in Britain last year, according to EU statistics. More Home Office visas were given to asylum seekers, trafficking victims and unaccompanied children than foreign students in 2014. The figure is bigger than any other EU country and means that one in four of all permits dished out in the whole of the continent were British. Home Office staff handed out signifcantly more compared to other nations. Poland was in second place but issued 200,000 fewer, and Germany, was third with less than half the UK total.

The data, which does not count EU citizens coming to live in the UK, starkly illustrates the pressure being put on Britain by mass migration and comes and EU leaders struggle to hold the bloc together as it buckles under the weight of the refugee crisis engulfing it. Alp Mehmet of Migration Watch said: “This is not surprising. It backs up the figures of long term residents coming into the country. “We know that the UK is an attractive destination for people around the world. “If you add the numbers of illegal immigrants to that you are talking about well over 500,000 people a year who need housing and the rest of the social support that residents need.

GETTY The UK has handed out residence permits to migrants at a rate of more than one every single minute

“The true total may be far higher than the official figures.” Steven Woolfe, UKIP Migration spokesman said: “Evidence of the attractiveness of Britain as a place of residence for non-EU nationals who want to live outside their home countries is indisputable.

Evidence of the attractiveness of Britain as a place of residence for non-EU nationals who want to live outside their home countries is indisputable Steven Woolfe, UKIP Migration spokesman

“The implications for the government’s migration policies are also self-evident. First, any attempt by David Cameron to get UK net migration to ‘tens of thousands’ instead of the current 330,000 per year is a pipe dream unless he can stem the flow of new EU residents into Britain. “Second, the pressure put on the economies of EU countries being forced by Germany to accept quotas of refugees from the Middle-East and Africa will mean that more EU citizens are likely to up sticks and come to Britain like millions before them. The only way to stop this is to leave the EU and take back control of Britain’s borders from Brussels” Figures published yesterday by the European Commission’s statistical wing, Eurostat, showed that the 28 EU member states issued a total of 2.3million residence permits or visas allowing non-Europeans to stay in their countries legally for three months or more. One in four of that total - 567,806 – were handed out by the UK.

Although Britain had the highest figure for the second year in a row, its 2014 total was down on the 724,200 non-Europeans who came to the UK in 2013. The next highest was Poland who handed out 355,418 – mainly to Ukranian workers – and then Germany where 237,627 were issued. Americans, Chinese and Indians were the three main nationalities coming to Britain. The largest number of British visas - 177,364 - were given for “other reasons” which includes to asylum seekers, victims of people traffickers and children who arrive without their parents. Britain’s attractiveness to those looking for safety is underlined by the fact that Poland was second in the “other reasons” category with 118,229 and Germany third with just 67,285 Student visas were the next biggest category with 177, 234 showing the UK was the top destination in the EU for education-related migration.

GETTY More Home Office visas were given to asylum seekers and unaccompanied children than foreign students

A further 116,707 were granted for people coming for work and 96,501 came for “family reasons.” Poland was the top destination for migrant workers and attracted mainly Ukranians, those from Belarus and Moldova. In its report, Eurostat said the total number of residence permits handed out last year across the EU was about 50,000, or 2 percent, down on 2013. “The United Kingdom issued the highest number of first permits in the EU in 2014 with 568,000, followed by Poland with 355,000, Germany with 238,000, France with 218,000, Italy with 204,000 and Spain with 189,000. “These six countries represented more than 75 per cent of all first permits issued in the EU to non-EU citizens,” it said.