Britain has had it with mass immigration
Sir Keir insists that his anti-immigration stance is not motivated by low political considerations.
In April, Britain’s prime minister delivered a forceful speech on immigration. Migrants should be celebrated, he said, for they make a “huge contribution” to the country. Far from being a burden on public services, they are often the very people delivering those services. Almost all follow the rules. Those who claim that migration is out of control are “simply wrong”.
That was Sir Tony Blair, in April 2004. The current occupant of 10 Downing Street, Starmer">Sir Keir Starmer, speaks rather differently. Britain has become “a one-nation experiment in open borders”, he argued while unveiling a new immigration policy on May 12th. Unrestrained immigration has caused “incalculable” damage to the country, straining public services. His government will “close the book on a squalid chapter for our politics, our economy and our country.”
Sir Keir insists that his anti-immigration stance is not motivated by low political considerations. He is cracking down on migration because it is the right thing to do; nobody should be under the impression that he is “targeting these voters” or “responding to that party”. Most of Britain will be under exactly that impression.
Reform UK , a searingly anti-immigration party, now comes top in many polls of voting intention. In local elections on May 1st it humiliated both Labour and the Conservative Party—which has also turned in a nativist direction. Polling by Ipsos in April shows that immigration is seen as the second-most-important issue in Britain, after the economy. For Conservative and Reform supporters, it is the most important issue.
Britain has certainly seen a lot of movement in the past few years. For much of the 2010s net migration (immigration minus emigration) was between 200,000 and 300,000 people a year. Covid-19 cut it to almost nothing. Then it surged, reaching 900,000 in the year to June 2023. Whereas most immigrants in the 2010s were Europeans, the great majority now are from farther afield.
But Sir Keir is wrong to say that Britain has conducted an experiment in open borders. The country’s borders were open before the country left the EU, although only to Europeans. Since 2021 Britain has controlled immigration from all countries. It has chosen to place the bar low. Salary thresholds for skilled workers were initially set at modest levels; health and social-care workers have been welcomed; foreign students have been able to work in Britain after graduating. The low bar for workers, and generous policies towards persecuted Hong Kongers and Ukrainians, have pushed up migration numbers.
Next week the Office for National Statistics will release new estimates of net migration over the past year. They will almost certainly show a dramatic fall. The bar for work visas was raised in April last year (under the Tories), and few Hong Kongers or Ukrainians are arriving these days. But the government is determined to push the figure lower still. “Net migration must come down so the system is properly managed and controlled,” argues Yvette Cooper, the home secretary.
To do that, the government will press down on almost every kind of immigration. Eligibility for work visas will be restricted, and care workers will no longer receive them. Companies that want to hire foreigners will have to convince a new outfit, the Labour Market Evidence Group, that they are straining to train natives. Graduates will be given work visas for 18 months, not two years as at present. People who want to join their spouses in Britain will have to speak basic English.
Most striking—though at present most vague—are the government’s plans to make some migrants wait longer for settlement and citizenship. At present many can apply for settlement after five years. In future migrants will have to wait ten years, unless they can show that they have contributed to British society and the economy. Further details are promised.
To misquote P.G. Wodehouse, it is not at all difficult to distinguish between the government’s plan and a ray of sunshine. The worst is assumed of everyone. Immigrants are assumed to be undercutting native workers. Businesses are said to be hooked on them. Student visas are being misused, as is the asylum system. Community cohesion is being eroded. The fact that Britain is rather good at integrating immigrants and their offspring, which struck Sir Tony in 2004 and is even truer today than it was then, is not mentioned.
Two dangers lurk in this. The first is that only some people will notice that Britain is sticking two fingers up to the world, and they will not be the ones that the government wishes to deter. Asylum-seekers, who numbered a record 108,000 in 2024, are often ignorant of policy changes. An American software engineer with a phd is likely to be better informed, perhaps as a result of reading this article. A survey of foreign workers by the Home Office, released the same day as the immigration plan, revealed (unsurprisingly) that people with more qualifications, who came from Europe, Australia and the Americas, were more likely to have mulled other options before moving to Britain.
The second danger is that the plan fails on its own terms. Immigration and net migration are very hard to forecast. The surge in work migration after 2020 was unexpected, as was the full-scale invasion of Ukraine that caused so many people to flee. A mass migration of eastern Europeans, which began soon after Sir Tony’s speech in 2004, surprised many, too.
Ms Cooper sees control over immigration and lower numbers as the same thing, but they are not. Britain can impose restrictions on more people and end up with more migrants, as recent history has shown. If the closely watched net-migration figure creeps up in a few years’ time, ministers will doubtless argue that the circumstances are highly unusual, and that everything is under control. Nobody will believe them. Nor should they.
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