and many of the nation's best clubs played in the English league system. The League of Wales was formed to remedy this and, as of 2020 and renamed Cymru Premier, is now the top division of a full national league system. In 2003, the Irish Football Association took direct charge of Northern Ireland's top flight with the creation of the Irish Premier League, splitting from the Irish Football League. Other sports Cricket is England's other historic sport, but it grew faster in popularity in the overseas colonies, and immigrants in increasing numbers comprised the ranks of top players and fan base. Tennis spread from upper-class estates into tennis clubs in middle-class suburbs, where it became a woman's specialty. Women increasingly frequented gyms, which sprang up everywhere; by the mid-1990s, one in six members were women. Middle-class men and women were usually more active than working-class people were. Scotland, the birthplace of golf, remains the top destination for the sport; many clubs opened up by 1910 and continue to operate to the present day. The total number of golfers reached the 2.5 million mark by 2000. Immigration Whilst in the second half of the 20th century most immigrants to the UK arrived from the former British empire in the early 21st century large numbers arrived from Europe and the Middle East. The UK population was recorded as 56,267,000 people in 1996, out of which 52,942,000 were White. The other 3,307,000 represented diverse ethnic or racial origins: 875,000 were Black; 1,639,000 were Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi; 126,000 were Chinese; 161,000 were Other Asian; 506,000 were from other groups or were of mixed-race origin. Some immigrants came to the UK as asylum seekers, seeking protection as refugees under the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention, or from member states of the European Union, exercising one of the European Union's Four Freedoms. Since the 1980s, however, the UK has become a leading proponent of European restrictionalism and has developed policies that tend to exclude asylum seekers from mainstream society. Dispersal policy was set up through the National Asylum Support Service programme so that asylum seekers were directed to urban areas that had available housing, although possibly because of a weak job market. While newly arrived asylum seekers and refugees had both skills and qualifications, they experienced high levels of unemployment, or else found mostly low-skilled jobs with low pay. Public opinion in host areas turned