Survey shows half EU immigrants to UK have left

By Paul Majendie

LONDON (Reuters) - One million immigrants from Eastern Europe have arrived in Britain since 2004 and half of them have already returned home, a report showed on Wednesday.

A think-tank study also suggested the arrival of immigrants from 10 new European Union members would slow as economic conditions improved in their home countries.

"Migration from the new EU member states has happened on a staggering scale but seems to have been largely positive for all concerned," said Danny Sriskandarajah, co-author of the report for the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).

"It is a question of when, not if, the great east European migration slows. With fewer migrants in and more migrants out, the UK seems to be experiencing turnstiles, not floodgates."

Its findings highlighted the gulf between the cross-border flow and initial British government predictions that only a few thousand would be tempted to seek work in the country.

"Four in ten of the returned Polish migrants we surveyed think that better employment prospects in Poland would encourage Poles living in the UK to return to Poland for good," it said.

Eight states joined the European Union in May 2004 -- Poland, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Bulgaria and Romania joined in 2007.

The research showed there were 665,000 people from the 10 new EU members living in Britain in the last quarter of 2007.