A lot of current refugees looking for a new home. There was a lot of pressure from the EU to take as many as wanted to come.
Pressure which the UK successfully resisted. There’s a lot of misunderstanding about this here, especially in connection with the Syrian refugee crisis. It’s assumed that the UK participated in Merkel’s plan for quotas distributing refugees throughout the EU. Not so. Cameron refused to play ball, and there was nothing Merkel or the EU could do to enforce it .That’s because the UK has never been part of the Schengen open-borders area, and still controls its own borders (hence the log-jam of would-be immigrants art Calais etc). When the UK has accepted refugees it has been through its own choice, not because of EU pressure.