UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer made a speech on May 12 in which he warned that uncontrolled migration risked making the UK an “island of strangers”. He said this at a press conference on a new immigration white paper introducing several stringent immigration policies to more than halve net migration from about 728,000 in 2024 to 300,000 by 2029. Much of the “political content” of his speech, including the “island of strangers’” comment, has been redacted from the official government transcript.
What was not redacted from the speech was a thinly veiled attack on the Conservative Party, which was in power for more than a decade, in 2010-24, and during which net migration skyrocketed, despite promising to “take back control” of the UK’s borders.
The major issue at the polls in the UK is therefore immigration and this has been behind the rising popularity of the right-wing, populist Reform UK party. I wrote last week about how the rising cost of living was driving the strong performance in the UK local government elections of the Reform party, and spooking both the ruling Labour Party and the official opposition Conservative Party. The response of Labour seems to be to out-Reform Reform.
The government is proposing to double the residency requirement for permanent settlement from five to 10 years, raise salary thresholds for skilled workers, clamp down on post-study opportunities and limit family-reunification opportunities.
Most reasonable British people understand that many immigrants who come to the UK legally to study or to work in skilled positions contribute immeasurably to the economy, keep hospitals and universities afloat, and also pay taxes.
To say that the remarks and their sentiment did not land well with the UK’s immigrant community, is a bit of an understatement. UK immigrants hark from every ethnic group and country globally, and much of their long-term planning to settle in the UK is now in disarray.
The irony of course is that the British themselves are a nation of immigrants, who invaded many countries during their imperial era. The Anglo-Saxons themselves were of Germanic descent, arriving after the Romans left in about 400AD. But, anyway.
Most reasonable British people understand that many immigrants who come to the UK legally to study or to work in skilled positions contribute immeasurably to the economy, keep hospitals and universities afloat, and also pay taxes. The prime minister himself said that innovation depends on being able to attract the best global talent.
So if you look closer, while immigration under present economic conditions is an easy target for opportunistic politicians, for most people it is not “immigration” with a capital “I” that is the main issue, but rather the more nuanced problem of unskilled labour and illegal migrants, particularly those arriving on “small boats”.
Aided by immoral smugglers charging as much as R120,000, increasing numbers of desperate people have risked their lives by crossing the English Channel illegally over the past 10 years.
The University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory shows that the recorded figures for small boat arrivals were 1,843 in 2019; 8,466 in 2020; 28,526 in 2021; 45,774 in 2022; and 29,437 in 2023. A total of more than 100,000 people in just five years — and those are only the recorded figures, reflecting only about 33% of total irregular arrivals. At least 75% of small-boat arrivals are men, nearly all of them asylum seekers from Iran, Albania, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.
As conflict, unemployment, and climate change continue to displace people globally, the issue will not go away. And as hard done by as the UK feels by global immigration, it does not have the largest intake of people by far. The countries with the most refugees are Iran, Turkey, Germany and Uganda — taking in millions of people every year from Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine and South Sudan, respectively. Perhaps the UK needs to look at its foreign policy and international development policy and introspect.
• Dr Masie is a visiting senior fellow at the London School of Economics.
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