Immigration has long been a fraught area of political discourse. Legitimate discussions about its benefits and disadvantages have always had the potential to be co-opted by ethno-nationalists in service of racism. For populist politicians looking to distract from or find scapegoats for their domestic failures, immigrants and asylum seekers can be an easy target.
From Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech, to Harold Wilson’s racist policy of denying entry to Kenyan Asians with British passports, to New Labour’s targeting of asylum seekers, to the current government’s Rwanda refugee policy: Britain has been far from immune from these tendencies in recent decades. Government policy has too often been driven by unrealistic promises, such as Theresa May’s pledge to cut net migration to the “tens of thousands”, not by what is in the best interests of the country.
This week the latest set of migration statistics will be published. They will show net migration at record levels, driven by large numbers of people from Ukraine and Hong Kong moving to the UK as a result of humanitarian resettlement schemes, and a post-Brexit liberalisation of the immigration regime for non-EU international students and skilled workers. They are likely to set in train an arbitrary debate about whether levels of immigration are too high that is divorced both from economic realities and public opinion.
The vote for Britain to leave the European Union was driven in large part by public sentiment that immigration flows from the rest of the EU in the 2000s were too high as a result of free movement of people within the bloc. The Leave campaign put control over immigration policy at the heart of its case.
But since Brexit, the salience of immigration as an issue has dropped dramatically. In 2016, half of voters polled said immigration was a top concern; by the end of 2022, it had fallen to just 11%.
And Brexit has not led to falls in net migration; quite the contrary. As moving to Britain has been made harder for EU citizens – 51,000 more of them left the UK than came to live here in the year to June 2022 – the immigration system has been quietly but significantly liberalised for migrants from the rest of the world. The salary requirement for skilled worker visas has been reduced by £4,000 a year and mid-skill jobs have become eligible for these visas as a result of a reduction in minimum qualification levels. The government has the flexibility to open up visas for lower-paid work where there are shortages; it did this for care jobs in February 2022. Moreover, there have been changes to visas for students that mean they can bring dependants and can remain and work here without a specific visa for up to two years after they graduate, which has increased the attractiveness of the UK as a study destination. The 200,000 Ukrainians and 150,000 from Hong Kong who have come to the UK via bespoke resettlement schemes are also counted in migration statistics.
So high net-migration numbers are a feature, not a bug of government policy. And they are a good thing. These migrants are helping to fill debilitating skills shortages in the economy and are adding to the cultural richness of the UK. The NHS and care system would be in even direr straits without them: more than half of visas went to people working in health and care.
Nor are these numbers out of step with public opinion. All the evidence suggests that the public are pragmatic in their approach to immigration; they are more concerned with the government’s degree of control rather than absolute levels, and on balance support immigration that benefits the economy. Comparative polling across 17 countries shows that British people have the most positive attitudes towards immigration; only three in 10 say there should be strict limits on the numbers, whereas almost seven in 10 think people should be able to come if there are jobs available, or that anyone who wants to should be able to move here. Well over half the public think immigration has had a net positive effect; only 9% a bad impact on the country. These positive attitudes reflect a long-term reality, which is that no matter how much the government succeeds in improving skills, falling birth rates and an ageing society mean that, increasingly, the choice will be between higher levels of immigration or steeper taxes in order to maintain anything like current levels of health and care provision for older adults.
But the risk is that Conservative politicians who want to push debate away from the grim state of the economy and evade blame for declining public services will try to gee up anti-immigration sentiment in the run-up to the next election. On the right of the Conservative party, high levels of immigration are often linked to a lack of housing, stretched public services, lower wages, and – perhaps most insidiously – some sort of “threat” to community cohesion and national identity. Yet politicians cannot blame immigrants for decades-long political failures to build more houses and improve affordability.
In aggregate, immigrants pay for the services they use through their taxes; the NHS could not run without immigrant nurses and doctors. Immigration has a very small impact on wages; in fact, wages have not risen in low-paid sectors like hospitality that are now experiencing labour shortages as a result of Brexit and the end of free movement, and the government is actively using low-skill migration in the care sector where it is the main employer to avoid the need to put up wages.
Rishi Sunak said last week that immigration levels were “too high”, a nonsensical statement given the levels are the product of his own sensibly liberal policies. He has at least avoided settling on an unachievable and artificially low target like some of his predecessors. However, there are others in his party who are all too willing to make a toxic and false narrative about immigration part of their pitch to party members to be the next Conservative leader in anticipation of a general election defeat. And Sunak has willingly put at the heart of his agenda drastic and punitive measures to make it harder for refugees to claim asylum.
Public attitudes on immigration are overwhelmingly sensible, pragmatic and compassionate. The issue is those Conservative politicians who, driven by what’s in their perceived self-interest, are not.
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