UK to Enact New Tougher Immigration Rules to Cut Back as Much as 300K Foreign Arrivals in the Next Few Years
All over Europe, the scourge of unchecked mass migration is rapidly becoming the main concern of voters, and as an inevitable consequence, conservative parties are starting to wake up from their ‘coma’, and are starting to address the issue, before it’s too late.
In the UK, for example, drastically reducing immigration has been a central issue for many in the governing Conservative Party.
Brexit was predicated, among other things, in a call to ‘take back control of the country’s borders’.
It was mostly talk, it turns out – but can they change now?
The British government announced tough new immigration rules that would reduce the number of people able to move to the U.K. each year by as much as 300,000.
Home Secretary James Cleverly is taking ‘robust action’ with the new rules. Immigrants will now have to earn more to get a work visa, and will find it much harder to bring family members to the U.K.
ABC News reported:
“Cleverly said that from the spring of 2024, prospective immigrants will have to earn 38,700 pounds ($48,900) to get a skilled worker visa, up from 26,200 pounds ($33,000) now. British citizens who want to bring their foreign spouse to Britain will have to earn the same amount – almost double the current threshold.
The government also said it would scrap a rule that lets employers in sectors on a “shortage occupation list” pay immigrant workers 20% less than U.K. citizens.”
Most foreign graduate students will also no longer be able to bring family members to the U.K.
Cleverly hopes the new measures will reduce by 300,000 the number of people eligible to move to Britain in future years.
Read: UK Government Contract States That Illegal Immigrants Must Have 3 Star Hotel Rooms or Better
Net migration to the U.K. — the number of people arriving minus those leaving — was an unmanageable 745,000 in 2022.
“Britain left the [EU] bloc in 2020, ending the automatic right of citizens from the 27 EU nations to live and work in the U.K. Since then the number of visas issued for people to come to Britain for work or study has soared. The country has also taken in hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war in Ukraine and the Chinese government’s crackdown on civil liberties in Hong Kong. The 2022 immigration figure is three times the pre-Brexit level.”
Many voters see how immigration increases the pressure on already public services and worsen the housing crisis.
“Opposition Labour Party immigration spokeswoman Yvette Cooper said the government had failed to train U.K. workers to fill key jobs. ‘Where is the workforce plan on social care, on engineering, on bricklaying, on all shortage occupations that their total economic failure has left us with?’ she said.”
The Economist reported:
“When the Conservatives came to power in 2010 they promised to reduce net migration to below 100,000 a year. Since the Brexit vote in 2016, there has been much talk of “taking back control” of Britain’s borders. The 2019 Tory manifesto pledged a reduction in immigration, though it did not specify a number. Yet immigration has continued to climb.
[…] Immigration matters to voters. According to polling from YouGov, a research firm, 40% of Britons consider immigration and asylum among the most important issues facing the country, up from under 20% in early 2021. It now ranks just below the economy and the state of the National Health Service in the public’s concerns. Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, and Mr Cleverly have been under rising pressure from the right of their own party, much of the popular press and a large block of voters to act tough.”
Read more:
