Britain has the highest population of illegal migrants in Europe, according to the latest available estimates - as it lags behind European neighbours in its efforts to tackle the problem.
Nigel Farage yesterday vowed to deport as many as 600,000 people if he wins power after detaining them in 'large-scale raids' - an echo of the crackdown by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, on the Continent, countries like Sweden, Denmark and Germany are cracking down on migration by making it far harder to claim asylum, with notable results.
The latest statistics on the number of illegal migrants in the UK - quoted by the University of Oxford's Migration Observatory - give a range of between 594,000 and 745,000.
If the upper estimate was correct, this would be the highest population in Europe, followed by Germany (700,000 to 600,000), Spain (469,000 to 391,000) and Italy (458,000 with no lower estimate).
