‘White flight’ hits London, highlighting immigration trend

For the first time in history, the white Brit population has fallen below the 50 percent mark in London, the largest city in the country, the BBC reported.

White Brits accounted for 45 percent of the population in 2011, compared to 58 percent in 2001, according to the U.K.'s Office for National Statistics.

A total of 620,000 white Brits moved from London during that 10-year period — a number equivalent to the size of Glasgow — according to census figures cited in the BBC report.

Meanwhile, the population of Londoners with ties to outside nations has grown, with 3 million of the city's residents now foreign-born, the Daily Mail reported.

The trend — dubbed "white flight" by one think tank analyst — was replicated in some of the boroughs surrounding London, too.

"It's surely obvious that the main reason for white flight is because people are not willing to live in an environment which has changed beyond recognition and against their own wishes," Sir Andrew Green, chairman of the Migration Watch think tank, told the Daily Mail.

The second-largest ethnic group in London is now Asians at 18 percent of the population, according to the Daily Mail. Black Londoners comprise 13 percent.

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