London, March 1:

More than 345,000 migrants from eastern Europe have registered to work in Britain since the expansion of the European Union in April last year, official data revealed yesterday.

The new migrant figures were published as the latest asylum figures show that those seeking refugee status in Britain fell by nearly a quarter to 25,720 new applicants in 2005 — the lowest level for more than a decade.

Refugee welfare groups last night expressed concern that it had become so difficult to claim asylum in Britain that people in need of human rights protection were being discouraged from doing so. The latest figures, showing that 345,410 people from Poland and the other new EU states signed up to the special work registration scheme between May 2004 and December 2005, illustrate the changing nature of immigration to Britain.

The UK’s Department for Work and Pensions published research yesterday showing that there was no ‘discernible statistical evidence’ to suggest that migration from the new EU states had contributed to the rise in unemployment in Britain last year. Although a significant proportion of the 345,000 have already gone home after working on short-term contract jobs, many more continue to come, with a further 49,000 arriving between October and December last year. East Anglia, with its concentration of agriculture, has overtaken London as the region with the largest number of new EU migrants.

Britain was one of only three EU states, along with Ireland and Sweden, to open its borders immediately to migrants from eastern Europe, on the grounds that they would fill gaps in the labour market and if they did not travel legally they would do so illegally. More than 80 per cent are young, between 18 and 34, and single. They earn between 4.50 pounds and 5.99 pounds an hour. The largest group come from Poland (204,895), followed by Lithuania (44,715) and Slovakia (36,355).

The fall in the asylum figures for 2005 alarmed refugee welfare groups last night. Habib Rahman, of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said he welcomed the positive messages the government had sent out about economic migrants but added that those claiming human rights protection had been criminalised, “There appears to be less of a welcome in the UK for those fleeing persecution,” he said.

The largest group of asylum seekers were from Iran, followed by Eritrea and Afghanistan.