Data shows 50 cases of the highly contagious bacterial disease – which is potentially fatal – were recorded among those who came here between January and November last year.
The latest figures show 86 cases have occurred over the same period this year – a rise of 70 per cent. Seventy of them were in London and the south-east of England.
UK Health Security Agency officials have now recommended a mass vaccination programme for all those in reception centres.
People who had previously resided in one will also be offered a vaccine which cost £7.80 each.
Tens of thousands of people could eventually be jabbed.
The rise comes after a report last year linked the surge to the small boats crisis. The European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases report for England used UKHSA figures and is based on genomic testing of hundreds of cases across 10 countries in Europe.
Research led by Dr Helena Seth-Smith, of Zurich University, and Dr Sylvain Brisse, of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, found outbreaks across the Continent and the UK in the past year had been “mostly linked to incoming migrants”.
Diphtheria is rare here due to vaccination introduced in 1942. Before this mass programme there were an average of 60,000 cases a year and 4,000 deaths.
Commenting on the rising number of cases, Dr Jay Verma, a GP and president of the Primary Care section at the Royal Society of Medicine, said: “In a global world there is no way of stopping the arrival of new diseases – as we see with flu every year – so the best form of defence is to be protected with a vaccine.”
Rebecca Cordery, consultant epidemiologist at UKHSA, said: “Diphtheria is a vaccine-preventable disease which is very rare in the UK, due to the success of our routine vaccination programme.
“The risk to the wider public from diphtheria remains very low.”