Record high immigration despite Brexit: Great Britain is putting on the brakes

Taking back control over immigration was one of the main arguments for Brexit in the 2016 referendum – combined with the promise to curb migration. Many Brits may have been all the more surprised to learn that net immigration is breaking all records three years after the EU exit was finally completed.

According to the latest figures from the statistics office Between June 2022 and June 2023, a total of 672,000 more immigrants came into the country than emigrants left Great Britain. Between December 2021 and December 2022 there were 745,000 immigrants – more than twice as many as in the year before the Brexit referendum.

Indians, Nigerians and Chinese

The high numbers are in blatant contradiction to the Conservative Party’s election promises and have now forced Rishi Sunak’s government to pull the emergency brake with a package of measures. The reason for the high numbers is not just special factors such as refugees from Ukraine or Hong Kong.

Rather, migrant workers and students made up the lion’s share of immigrants. This confirms the trend that migrants from outside the EU have replaced Europeans after Brexit. Instead of Poland, Romania or Spain, India, Nigeria and China are now the most important countries of origin.

According to the points system introduced by Boris Johnson, after Brexit only those who had a job offer with a salary of at least 26,200 pounds (29,000 francs) per year would receive a work visa. This is where the package of measures with which Sunak wants to throttle migration comes into play. In the future, anyone who wants to immigrate to Great Britain will have to have a job offer with a salary of 38,700 pounds.

In addition, a number of special permits for sectors with staff shortages are to be canceled. However, exceptions will continue to apply to health workers and employees of retirement and nursing homes. However, the government wants to prohibit them from bringing their spouses or children into the country in the future.

In the future, even Brits and foreigners who are already resident will have to have a much higher income in order to bring family members from abroad to Great Britain. This earned the government accusations on social networks of pursuing anti-family and hypocritical policies, especially since Sunak and a number of cabinet members are married to foreigners.

Concession to the right wing of the party

Home Secretary James Cleverly said in the House of Commons that the package of measures would reduce migration by around 300,000 people per year, thus halving the current level. Representatives of the right wing of the party were not completely satisfied. Cleverly’s predecessor Suella Braverman, who dismissed Sunak from the cabinet a month ago after a dispute, criticized the measures as coming too late. She also called for the introduction of a maximum number of visas that Parliament would set each year.

Overall, however, the measures represent a concession by Sunak to party rights, which could of course have undesirable side effects. Representatives of retirement and nursing homes and the healthcare system warned of bottlenecks, as it would be more difficult to recruit staff without the option of family reunification.

The government wants to train more health and nursing staff domestically, but this will take years. Stricter requirements should also encourage more social welfare recipients to return to work – not least in the elderly care sector.

However, higher wages are likely to be necessary so that the care sector becomes competitive with industries such as retail. But there is a lack of money in the municipalities responsible for social welfare, especially since many municipalities are already on the brink of financial collapse.

Generous pay rises also threaten to fuel inflation, which Sunak has made lowering his top political priority. Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt fears that the stricter migration hurdles could lead to the sluggish economy sliding into recession in the 2024 election year.

Migration as an election issue?

Conflicts of objectives also arise when dealing with students. The government is considering withdrawing permission from foreign university graduates to work in Great Britain for two years after completing their studies. But the country is in competition with university and research places in Europe, America and Australia. Therefore, the government under the aegis of Boris Johnson had drawn up a Brexit plan specifically to attract hundreds of thousands of international students and talent.

It is unclear what significance migration policy will have in the general elections next year. The topic has regained importance in the population’s worry barometer. But the overburdened healthcare system and the economic situation represent more existential concerns. Surveys also showthat the British want less migration overall, but are very open to students and foreign health and nursing staff.

What angers the population most is not the legal, but irregular migration of boat migrants across the English Channel. After the Supreme Court recently declared the plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda to be illegal, Interior Minister Cleverly concluded a second agreement with Kigali on Tuesday. On this basis, Sunak wants to try to breathe new life into the controversial Rwanda plan in the coming days.