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Vote Leave campaign argues that EU workers are flooding into the country and that Britain needs to take back control of its borders.NEIL HALL/Reuters

The campaign to pull Britain out of the European Union has been given new life just when it appeared support for Brexit was waning.

For weeks, polls have indicated that support for Britain to remain in the EU has been edging up, thanks largely to a barrage of dire warnings from economists, the Bank of England and international organizations about the economic uncertainty the country would face if it pulled out. The number of those in favour of sticking with the EU in the June 23 referendum has moved up enough that some betting shops have put the odds of a Remain victory at about 80 per cent.

But on Thursday the government released long-awaited figures on immigration, handing the Vote Leave campaign a boost to its argument that EU workers are flooding into the country and that Britain needs to take back control of its borders.

The figures from the Office for National Statistics showed net migration to Britain reached a near-record 333,000 in 2015, up by 20,000 from the previous year. Prime Minister David Cameron had pledged to bring the number down to the "tens of thousands, not the hundreds of thousands." Net migration is the difference between those arriving for at least one year and those leaving. The total was the second-highest on record and the figures also showed that net migration from EU countries hit a record 184,000 in 2015.

The ONS report means that "we are adding a population the size of Oxford to the U.K. every year just from EU migration," said Conservative MP Boris Johnson, a leader of the Leave campaign.

He added that the system had "spun out of control."

"We cannot control the numbers. We cannot control the terms on which people come and how we remove those who abuse our hospitality," Mr. Johnson said.

"Mass immigration is still hopelessly out of control and set to get worse if we remain inside the EU, going on with disastrous open borders," said Nigel Farage, leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, which backs the Leave campaign.

The Remain camp countered that pulling out of the EU was not the answer to immigration control because it would only damage the economy. And, they said Mr. Cameron's renegotiation of Britain's EU membership would crack down on illegal immigration and restrict welfare benefits for new arrivals.

Immigration and the economy are the two biggest topics in the referendum debate and so far the Remain side has been more effective at pushing the economic agenda. The Bank of England has predicted that the country's economy could slip into a recession after a Leave vote and mortgage rates could rise. Investors fear that the stock market could fall by more than 10 per cent and the International Monetary Fund has said there is no positive scenario if Britain pulls out of the EU. That has pushed support for Remain up and a recent compilation of six polls by NatCen, a social research think tank, showed support for the Remain side at 53 per cent with the Leave side at 47 per cent.

Thursday's figures will give the Leave campaign at least a temporary boost, said John Curtice, a professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde. "Immigration has been high, it continues to be high and that gives the Leave side a chance to remind people that is indeed the case," he said.

Prof. Curtice added that immigration is a critical issue in the referendum campaign and the Leave side has the advantage on the topic. "Nearly three-fifths of people think immigration is going to be higher if we stay inside the European Union," he said.

However, the economic arguments are also important, leaving voters torn. "It's how people play out the fact that they kind of agree with half the arguments of the Remain side and half of the arguments of Leave side. At the end, which are they going to decide to choose and go with?"

"Immigration is by far the best issue for the Leave campaign," Freddie Sayers of the polling firm YouGov said in a recent report. "The more it can focus the campaign on immigration, the better it will do."

He added that immigration "is an issue that currently tops the YouGov tracker as the issue voters care most about."

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