The country is remarkably comfortable with it. So far
years have passed since the Brexit referendum in 2016. The desire to “take back control” of Britain’s borders and end free movement of labour from the European Union was what motivated many to vote Leave. In the three years before 2016, long-term net migration—immigration minus emigration—had averaged 285,000. Few would have expected that after Brexit still more people would come.
The government is now concerned that some are taking advantage of its desire to attract students. Last year 85,000 people arrived as dependants of students, double the number in 2021. On May 23rd Suella Braverman, the home secretary, announced that students, unless on post-graduate research courses, may no longer sponsor dependants from January 2024 and promised to “clamp down on unscrupulous education agents”.
Second, immigration has been boosted by threats to life and liberty abroad. A total of 114,000 Ukrainians arrived in Britain last year on special visas after Russia’s invasion in February 2022. Around 90,000 Hong Kongers have settled over the past two years. And 73,000 asylum-seekers—often arriving by clandestine means, such as in small boats crossing the English Channel—have been included for the first time. TheThird, Britain’s new “points-based” workplace visa has buoyed the numbers.
Meanwhile the figure of 606,000 will be fodder for the tabloids and a headache for ministers. The Conservative Party’s general-election manifesto in 2019 promised that “overall numbers [of migrants] will come down”. Rishi Sunak, the prime minister since October, has hitherto focused on stopping people crossing the Channel in small boats. More recently he has said that overall migration numbers need to fall, but not by how much.
Voters seem less bothered than politicians. Britons have become considerably more welcoming in recent years. Just 21% of respondents to the British Social Attitudes survey in 2013 thought immigrants were good for the economy. In 2021 50% did. Nearly half said they “enriched” Britain’s cultural life, up from 27% in 2013. That shift has put Britain among the most pro-migrant countries in the long-running and widely used World Values Survey, according to Bobby Duffy of King’s College London.
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