This article discusses the data on international migration to the United Kingdom, their limitations and their origins. No one source gives a demographically satisfactory account of net migration, and different sources of data are not compatible with each other. Their present form can only be understood in the context of a reluctant acceptance, in the face of domestic political pressure, of the need to impose the same controls on the entry of Commonwealth citizens from 1962 through to 1971 as had been imposed on the entry of aliens since 1920. An attempt is made to relate these attitudes to a broader historical context.
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