A staggering 104,000 foreign nationals were convicted in England and Wales between 2021 and 2023, newly released data has revealed. The figures, obtained through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests by the Centre for Migration Control, include over 38,400 convictions related to violent crime, sexual assault, drugs, and theft. The data has raised significant concerns over the criminality of non-British nationals and the government’s handling of immigration.
Among these cases, foreign nationals were responsible for up to 23% of all sexual offence convictions: 15% of sexual offence convictions were committed by foreign nationals, with an additional 8% recorded as “unknown” nationalities, a category believed to contain a significant proportion of non-British offenders. This is despite census data showing that foreign nationals make up just 9.3% of the population.
The Centre for Migration Control’s research director, Rob Bates, called the data a wake-up call:
These figures lay bare the cost of mass migration on our home, reflecting tens of thousands of destroyed lives and the loss of social capital.
Among those convicted, Afghans and Eritreans were found to be more than 20 times more likely to have committed a sexual offence than British nationals. The conviction rate per 10,000 of the population was highest among Afghans (59 per 10,000), followed by Eritreans (53.6 per 10,000). Overall, foreign nationals were 71% more likely than Britons to be convicted of sex crimes.
The figures also show that foreign nationals accounted for between 12.5 and 16.4% of all convictions in England and Wales during the same period. Albanians had the highest conviction rate per 10,000 of their population, followed by Moldova, Congo, Namibia, and Somalia. In total, 66 nationalities had a higher overall crime conviction rate than British nationals.
The findings have reignited the debate over immigration and public safety. Bates criticised the government’s inaction:
The swift removal of every foreign national who is convicted of an offence is a clear starting point for beginning to reverse the damage.
He also accused the Home Office of neglecting its primary duty:
However low your estimation of the Home Office, it is frankly not low enough.
The Centre for Migration Control’s data has sparked wider concerns about national security, as the UK granted 557,041 long-term visas in 2024 to individuals from countries with higher conviction rates than Britain.
As Bates concluded:
Our streets are objectively less safe. The Home Office remains idle, ignoring this vital data and doubling down on its ‘come one, come all’ immigration policy.
Meanwhile, concerns over illegal Channel crossings persist. Last week, we reported that, in one day alone, 592 migrants crossed the Channel, marking the highest daily total in 2025 so far. Critics, including Reform UK, have dismissed the Labour government’s ‘smash the gangs’ policy as ineffective, arguing that Keir Starmer’s government has failed to deter crossings and will continue to do so without stronger enforcement and repatriation measures.
