Net migration to the UK increased in the year ending December 2012, the Office for National Statistics says.
Latest figures show net migration rose to 176,000 - up from 153,000 people in the year to September 2012.
The increase appears to buck the trend of a decline in net migration - the difference between the number of people coming to and leaving the country.
Prime Minister David Cameron wants to get UK net migration below 100,000 before the next election in 2015.
The increase was driven by a drop in the number of migrants leaving Britain, which fell from 351,000 to 321,000 in the year to December 2012, the ONS found.
Over the same period, the number of immigrants arriving in the country dropped from 566,000 to 497,000, figures showed.
Today's figures show how tough the government's self-imposed net migration target could become.
The news is not all bad. The detail shows that immigration itself is down on where it was when the coalition came in - now sitting at under half a million people a year.
But the problem for ministers is that they can't control emigration - and fewer people, particularly British and EU citizens, are leaving.
If fewer people leave, then the net migration balance can rise, even if the number of immigrants declines.
So with two years to go, there are real questions over whether the net migration target could ever be hit.
And that's why many experts on all sides of the political and policy debate argue that the net migration target just isn't a sensible measure of how well the system is being managed.
BBC home affairs correspondent Dominic Casciani said the reasons for the rise were complex and partly related to the fact that fewer people were emigrating from the UK than the government expected.
If fewer people leave the UK, then the net migration balance can rise, even if the number of immigrants arriving declines or remains static, he added.
'Out of options'Immigration minister Mark Harper said net migration was down by a third since its peak in 2010.
He added that a new immigration bill coming into force in the autumn would make it more difficult for people to come into Britain if they had no right to do so and would make it easier to remove people who were not entitled to stay in the country.
"We are committed to bringing net migration down from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands," Mr Harper said.
"We are working across government to protect public services and ensure our welfare system is not open to abuse."
Shadow immigration minister Chris Bryant said the figures were "a blow" to the home secretary.
"Theresa May's focus on net migration, which has gone wrong in these figures, has also meant the government is failing badly on illegal immigration, which is a major concern to the public and is getting worse and worse with fewer people being stopped at the border, absconsions up and deportations down.
"Immigration needs to be controlled, but we must recognise there is immigration that works for Britain and immigration that doesn't."
Sarah Mulley, of the centre-left think tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research, said the statistics suggested the government was running out of options to meet its target.
"Recent declines have been driven in large part by falling numbers of international students, which has come at a high economic cost, but this trend now appears to be levelling off," she said.
Other figures released in the report include:
- 97,000 immigrants from New Commonwealth countries, which include Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan came to the UK in the year ending December 2012, compared to 151,000 in the previous year. This drop is understood to be the result of fewer people arriving to study in the UK from those countries
- 58,000 immigrants arrived from countries which joined the EU in 2004, including Poland, the Czech Republic and Lithuania, down from 77,000 the previous year
- The number of immigrants arriving for study in the UK is now similar to the estimated number of people arriving in the UK for work. About 180,000 arrived in the UK for formal study in the year to December 2012, compared with 232,000 the previous year
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