# UK Immigration Records: Arrivals, Aliens and Registration Source: https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/uk-records/uk-immigration-records-aliens/ Last updated: 2026-09-29 Summary: UK immigration records explained: passenger lists, certificates of arrival, alien registration cards, internment and refugee files, and where to search. Publisher: The Polish Genealogist (professional Polish genealogy research, polishgenealogist.co.uk) --- There is no single index of everyone who came to live in the United Kingdom. UK immigration records are a set of separate sources, each covering a different period and a different group of people: ships’ passenger lists, certificates of arrival, police registration of aliens, internment files, refugee papers and Home Office nationality files. Most of the national series are at The National Archives in Kew, and several of the largest are searchable online. The quickest route is to work out roughly when your ancestor arrived and whether they were ever naturalised, then pick the sources that exist for that period. This guide explains what survives, what each record tells you, where to search free or by subscription, and the gaps that catch most people out. > **Found a Polish-born ancestor on an arrival list or an alien registration card?** We can take the birthplace and dates from the British record and follow the family back through Polish civil and parish records. [View research packages](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/services/family-history-research/) ### Why there is no single immigration index For most of the nineteenth century people could enter Britain with few formalities, so little was written down. Controls grew in stages: the Aliens Act 1905, the Aliens Restriction Act 1914, passed at the start of the First World War, and the Aliens Order 1920, which kept the wartime controls in peacetime. Each stage created new paperwork, and much of it was later destroyed or kept only as a sample. A foreign national living in Britain was legally an alien until naturalised. That word appears in almost every catalogue description, so use it in your searches alongside immigrant, refugee and internee. ### Arrival records: passenger lists and certificates of arrival #### Certificates of arrival, 1810-1869 The earliest arrival records for individuals are the certificates of alien arrivals. The National Archives holds originals for 1810-1811 (FO 83/21-22), July to November 1826 (CUST 102/393-395) and October 1826 to August 1837 (CUST 102/396), plus the series HO 2. From July 1836 to December 1869 ships’ masters also made returns of alien passengers under the Aliens Act 1836 (HO 3), with a gap from January 1861 to December 1866. HO 2, HO 3 and the Home Office entry books in HO 5 (1794-1921) can be searched on Ancestry. #### Inward passenger lists, 1878-1960 The best-known source is BT 26, the Board of Trade inward passenger lists. Most lists from 1878 to 1960 survive, but only for ships that sailed from ports outside Europe and the Mediterranean. Passengers who boarded such a ship at a European port on the way to Britain are included; people who crossed from Hamburg, Rotterdam, Ostend or Calais on a short-sea route are not. The National Archives notes that it holds very few records of passengers before 1878. BT 26 is indexed on Ancestry and Findmypast, both by subscription. A typical entry gives name, age, occupation, nationality and the intended address in the UK. Ages and nationalities were often written down by a purser rather than the passenger, so treat them as clues. ### Aliens registration: police cards from 1914 From 1914 aliens had to register with the police and pay a registration fee, and in return they received a registration certificate, usually a small booklet. Every change of address, job or marital status had to be reported and was entered in it. If the certificate survives in family papers, it is often the richest immigration document you will find, with a photograph, date of arrival and a run of addresses. The police kept a matching card for each person. For London, The National Archives holds MEPO 35, a sample of Metropolitan Police registration cards, and a set of cards for 1918-1957 has been digitised. The cards give full name, date of birth, date of arrival in the UK, marital status, children, address, employment history and date of naturalisation. Blue cards were for men, yellow for women and white for continuation cards. British-born women who lost their British status on marrying an alien also appear. You can download a card free from Discovery only if the person was born more than 100 years ago. MEPO 35 is only a sample: the rest of the London cards were not kept. Outside London, registration cards were held by local police forces, and most appear to have been destroyed. Some were deposited with county archives. Bedfordshire Archives, for example, holds registration cards from Bedfordshire Police, and recent cards are subject to a closure period. Ask the record office for your ancestor’s county whether any police aliens registers survive. Two further Home Office series matter for the twentieth century. HO 382 holds Aliens Department files on individual aliens who entered the UK after 1935. HO 481 contains Operation Post Reports on about 400,000 foreign nationals, mostly refugees from eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War; they are closed for 100 years, though you can ask for a review under the Freedom of Information Act. ### Internment records, First and Second World Wars Enemy aliens were interned in both world wars. Very few records of individual internees survive for the First World War. The main ones are internment lists for 1915 and 1918 in HO 144/11720 and a register of about 2,000 enemy aliens in HO 45/11522. For the Second World War, the internees index in HO 396 (1939-1947) gives more detail than any other single record. The cards cover mostly Germans, Austrians and Italians and their spouses, including Jewish refugees who had escaped Nazi persecution. They record name, date and place of birth, nationality, address, occupation, employer and the tribunal’s decision. HO 215 includes nominal rolls for internment camps on the Isle of Man, such as Hutchinson, Mooragh, Onchan and Port Erin. Both series are searchable on Findmypast and Ancestry. ### Refugees, displaced persons and European Volunteer Workers Refugee records are scattered. For Belgians who came in the First World War, MH 8 holds papers of the voluntary War Refugees Committee, including history cards. For Czechoslovak refugees from 1939, HO 294 contains papers of the Czechoslovak Refugee Trust with specimen personal files. Kindertransport records are searchable on Findmypast. Many refugee organisations kept their own files, so a catalogue search of Discovery and of local archives is worth doing. After 1945 Britain recruited workers from the displaced persons camps in Europe. Our guides to [European Volunteer Workers](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/polish-britain/european-volunteer-workers/) and [displaced persons records](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/records/displaced-persons/) explain where their registration and camp papers are held. ### From immigrant to British subject: naturalisation Many immigrants never applied for naturalisation, but for those who did the case papers are often the best single source. They usually include a police report on the applicant, with date of arrival, addresses and employers since arrival. The certificates are in HO 334 and the index in HO 409; later case papers are in HO 405, which is subject to a 100-year closure and only partly survives. Naturalisation has its own guide on this site: see [naturalisation records for Poles in the UK](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/polish-britain/naturalisation-records-poles-uk/). Work in both directions. A naturalisation file gives a date of arrival that sends you back to passenger lists, and an alien registration card gives a naturalisation date that sends you forward to the certificate. ### How to search: a step-by-step method 1. Fix the arrival window. Use the [census and the 1939 Register](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/uk-records/uk-census-records-and-1939-register/): from 1851 the census asks for birthplace, and many immigrants are marked as foreign subjects or naturalised British subjects. 2. Look for naturalisation first. Search The National Archives’ Discovery catalogue free by name in HO 334, HO 405 and HO 1. A hit gives dates and addresses to test everything else against. 3. Check family papers for a police registration certificate, a passport or an identity card. These are rarely in any archive. 4. Search passenger lists only where they can exist: BT 26 for voyages from outside Europe (1878-1960), HO 2 and HO 3 for 1810-1869. 5. For London residents, search MEPO 35 in Discovery. Elsewhere, ask the county record office about police aliens registers. 6. If your ancestor was German, Austrian or Italian in wartime, search the internment records. 7. Search local newspapers, electoral registers and [probate records](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/uk-records/probate-records-wills-england-wales/) for the years around arrival. The [guide to The National Archives at Kew](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/uk-records/national-archives-kew-family-history/) explains how to order copies of closed or undigitised files. #### Common pitfalls - Names were written as officials heard them and often changed later, so search by first name, date of birth and address as well as surname. - Nationality was recorded by the state of the time, not the ancestor’s own identity. - Records less than 100 years old about living people may be closed; a Freedom of Information request can open some. - An empty search does not mean an ancestor did not arrive: for many routes and years no list was kept. ### Polish arrivals in UK immigration records Poles appear in almost every source above, but under labels that can hide them. Before 1918 there was no Polish state, so a man born in Warsaw, Kraków or Poznań is usually recorded as Russian, Austrian or German, and Jewish migrants from Polish lands in the 1880s-1910s appear the same way. Most of that earlier wave crossed from continental ports on short-sea routes, which BT 26 does not cover, so the census, naturalisation papers and synagogue or community records are usually more productive. Between the wars the nationality becomes Polish, and after 1945 many Poles who would not return are described as stateless or of undetermined nationality. The largest group arrived in the 1940s: servicemen and women of the Polish forces, many of whom joined the Polish Resettlement Corps, their families, some of whom came by sea from camps in Africa, India and the Middle East, and displaced persons recruited as European Volunteer Workers. Soldiers evacuated from France in 1940 will not be in BT 26. Family members arriving later from outside Europe might be. The [history of Polish migration to the UK](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/polish-britain/polish-migration-to-uk/) sets out the waves and the records each one left. The clue you need from the British record is a place of birth and a date. Registration cards and naturalisation papers often give the town or village, sometimes in German or Russian spelling. With it, the next step is the birth or baptism entry in Poland: start with [finding a birth entry in Poland](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/vital-records/finding-a-birth-entry-in-poland/). For earlier emigrants, [Polish passenger lists](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/records/polish-passenger-lists/) covers departure records on the continental side. ### Official sources - [The National Archives: Immigration and immigrants](https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/immigration/) - [The National Archives: Passengers](https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/passengers/) - [The National Archives: Aliens’ registration cards 1918-1957](https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/aliens-registration-cards-1918-1957/) - [The National Archives: Internees](https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/internees/) - [The National Archives: Refugees](https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/refugees/) - [Discovery catalogue](https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/) - [legislation.gov.uk: Aliens Restriction Act 1914](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo5/4-5/12/contents/enacted) ### Related guides - [Naturalisation records of Poles in the UK](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/polish-britain/naturalisation-records-poles-uk/) - [Polish passenger lists](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/records/polish-passenger-lists/) - [European Volunteer Workers in Britain](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/polish-britain/european-volunteer-workers/) - [Family history at The National Archives, Kew](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/uk-records/national-archives-kew-family-history/) - [Merchant Navy records](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/uk-records/merchant-navy-records-uk/) > **Research service:** Traced the family back to a Polish-born ancestor? · 10, 20 or 30 hours of research for one family line · [View research packages](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/services/family-history-research/) --- Research help: The Polish Genealogist researches Polish family history, military service and citizenship evidence in Polish, British and international archives, with reports in English. Services and prices: https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/services/