The biggest increase came from Europe, specifically the new EU member states in Eastern Europe. Poland contributes about half of this total.
Nevertheless the East of England has a lower proportion of immigrants than England as a whole.
The East of England has only about two thirds of of the national proportion of immigrants from Africa and Asia but about the same share of Poles and other Eastern Europeans as the rest of England.
The analysis shows nearly all of the Eastern Europeans have arrived in the past ten years (since the enlargement of the EU in May 2004). They remain a relatively small proportion of the population at one in 50.
By way of comparison about one in 20 people in the East of England, or in 14 in England, generally are immigrants from Africa and Asia.
The East of England, like the rest of the country, also receives substantial numbers of people from highly developed countries in Western Europe, North America and the Antipodes. These countries contribute roughly twice the number of Eastern Europeans.
The research will feature in BBC Look East at 6.30pm on Friday 16 May.
ISER recently presented a selection of new research on immigration to an audience of policy makers, in collaboration with the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration at UCL. The studies presented included Professor Tim Hatton’s study on how attitudes to immigration may have been affected by the recession; Dr Renee Luthra’s study of Polish immigrants in London, Dublin, Germany and the Netherlands, and Dr Simonetta Longhi’s study of the make up of immigrants into the UK before and after the EU expansion in 2004.