All Articles: immigration policy

Back in the heady days of 2019, journalist Jon Stone started what turned out to be a very long thread on Twitter. Over and over and over again, he wrote “Abolish the Home Office”. Every tweet linked to example after example after example of appalling conduct by officials at the...

24th November 2022
BY Colin Yeo

What’s better than a plan for immigration? A new plan for immigration. July saw the publication of the Government’s New Plan for Immigration: Legal Migration and Border Control policy paper. Not much of the content can really be described as new. Unlike last March’s asylum-focused New Plan for Immigration however, this...

8th August 2022
BY John Vassiliou

This is the Policy Wheel. I was taught about it when working on immigration policy at the Home Office in 2003 and continued to use it until I left in 2011. I believe it is still used; certainly it is a great way to solve problems.   How would you...

13th October 2021
BY Ian Robinson

About half of the Home Secretary’s speech to the Conservative Party conference today was given over to immigration and asylum, but there were no new policy announcements. In fact it was, in structure, tone and content, much like last year’s effort: free movement is dead; work visas for the “best...

5th October 2021
BY CJ McKinney

The number of new visas is starting to make heads spin. The government’s announcement of a route for HGV drivers and poultry workers comes hot on the heels of a new employment route for Graduates which opened in July. Next year will see at least two more new visas launched,...

28th September 2021
BY Joanna Hunt

The Home Office published a New Plan for Immigration “strategy statement” earlier today. It is mostly about legal immigration and economic migrants, as opposed to the New Plan for Immigration document published in March that focused on illegal immigration and asylum seekers. Home Secretary Priti Patel marked its publication with...

24th May 2021
BY CJ McKinney

Emma Harrison recently argued on this site for a “campaigning in the middle ground’’ approach to advocacy. A central element of this position is that we need to be engaging with those who don’t share our agenda. It is not new to suggest that we have more in common with...

31st March 2021
BY Rose Bewick

There is a lot that is familiar in the New Plan for Immigration. The government argues that its proposals are “firm but fair”, language eerily reminiscent of a 1998 Blair-era white paper entitled Fairer, Faster and Firmer. One thing that is new is the proposal that many of those who...

25th March 2021
BY Alan Manning

Today the Home Office published a new plan for immigration with the title, somehow both grandiloquent and banal, New Plan for Immigration. It is mainly concerned with asylum and people who enter the UK illegally (those two concepts being subtly mashed together) but there are also some miscellaneous proposals for...

24th March 2021
BY CJ McKinney

Among the key points highlighted by the Treasury from today’s Budget is “reforms to the immigration system [to] help ambitious UK businesses attract the brightest and best international talent”. As a policy prescription, this is up there with motherhood and apple pie; even the most ardent restrictionists are in favour...

3rd March 2021
BY CJ McKinney

The hostile environment should be reformed by selective repeal of key provisions, addressing Home Office culture and improved routes to regularisation, an influential think tank has found. Beyond the hostile environment, a report released yesterday by the Institute for Public Policy Research, follows up on a previous look at the...

10th February 2021
BY Colin Yeo

There has been an interesting and mainly polite (if tense) discussion on and off Twitter in recent weeks about advocacy on migrants’ rights. This is in part linked to a short piece I wrote about deportations and a follow-up by Emma Harrison, director of IMIX. I’ve linked to some of...

8th February 2021
BY Colin Yeo

For many campaigners there is a lot of uncertainty about how to get traction for their cause as Brexit and Covid continue to dominate the policy space. Migration advocates have a different challenge: the government has been clear that it wants to create an immigration system which is “firm but...

7th December 2020
BY Emma Harrison

I follow immigration law and policy pretty closely but, I must confess, I simply do not know what UK government immigration policy is right now. We are told there is a new points based immigration system but that tells us nothing about what outcomes the government wants from the new...

4th December 2020
BY Colin Yeo

The Home Secretary, Priti Patel, delivered a keynote speech to the Conservative Party conference yesterday. Around half the speech was given over to what she repeatedly called the UK’s “broken” asylum system. I thought a transcript would be available by this morning but can’t find it, so have created one...

5th October 2020
BY CJ McKinney

The Home Office response to the coronavirus crisis has been hesitant at best. To the credit of the department, it has on the whole acted to protect its own staff and the staff of some of its major contractors, albeit sometimes belatedly. Basic steps to reduce immediate contagion risk were...

28th April 2020
BY Colin Yeo

Adilah is from Afghanistan. In 2012, she marries a British citizen, and moves to the UK on a spouse visa, which her husband applied for on her behalf. When she arrives in the UK, things are, to say the least, different from what she had imagined. She can’t leave the...

25th March 2020
BY Nath Gbikpi

The government has released a few more details of what it calls a “points based system” for immigration to the UK after Brexit. To balance out the impending end of free movement of workers from the European Union, it would allow employers to sponsor migrant workers at lower salaries and...

19th February 2020
BY CJ McKinney

The government should think twice about re-introducing a points based immigration system after Brexit, and lower the minimum salary necessary to get a work visa, the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) has recommended. In a report published today, the MAC says that the existing Tier 2 (General) work visa system should...

28th January 2020
BY CJ McKinney

The UK needs a world class migration system to attract the brightest and the best from across the world… That is why I am so pleased today to be able to publish this points-based system for the UK. – Home Secretary Charles Clarke, March 2006 We will introduce an Australian...

3rd January 2020
BY Darren Stevenson

The Conservative Party has won the general election and a mandate for its policy of an “Australian-style points based system” for immigration, whatever that means. The party manifesto leaves readers none the wiser. We can reveal that more details do exist. Last weekend, a rash of media stories emerged stating...

13th December 2019
BY CJ McKinney

What will the government formed after Thursday’s general election do with the UK immigration system? The three main political parties — those that have been in government before and might be again — have all published manifestos addressing immigration and asylum. Below is a table showing how the manifestos compare...

10th December 2019
BY CJ McKinney

If the polls are to be believed, the manifesto that the Conservatives launched yesterday will be the legislative agenda for the UK’s next government. Whichever way you intend to vote in the upcoming election, it needs careful scrutinising to see what a Conservative victory could mean for the UK’s immigration...

25th November 2019
BY Joanna Hunt

All eyes were on Birmingham yesterday for the launch of the Labour Party’s manifesto. Billed as “radical” by Jeremy Corbyn, its stated purpose is to offer “real change” and to build a fairer Britain. But this sense of radicalism does not wholly extend to Labour’s immigration policy. Those who were...

22nd November 2019
BY Joanna Hunt

This is overall a good manifesto on immigration from the Liberal Democrats. There are some choices that niggle, but often in areas where there is no perfect answer. It is still nowhere near forward-thinking or ambitious enough, and it will be interesting to compare to Labour’s. The aspirational benchmark, of...

21st November 2019
BY Chai Patel

As we’ve highlighted in recent blog posts, the Immigration Rules aggressively punish overstaying, to the point where accidentally staying beyond the expiry date of your visa even by just one day will basically ruin your life. “So what?”, you might say. “Overstayers are criminals and should be punished accordingly”. Clearly...

20th November 2019
BY John Vassiliou

For politicians with an agenda to push and votes to win, talking up an “Australian-style points based system” seems like a catchy, quick-fix solution to public anxiety over immigration. During the referendum campaign it was a popular trope of the leave campaign, trotted out endlessly, with little explanation as to...

8th November 2019
BY Joanna Hunt

Confusion abounds after Dominic Cummings sources close to Home Secretary Priti Patel told the Telegraph and Independent over the weekend that free movement of EU citizens would end the day after a no-deal exit on 31 October 2019. While at first glance it seems very unlikely that this means anything...

19th August 2019
BY Chris Desira

Boris Johnson is the new leader of the Conservative Party, and our next Prime Minister. How might he change the UK government’s policy on immigration? An important question, and when it comes to Johnson potentially a Sisyphean task, given his reputation as someone who will say whatever he thinks will...

23rd July 2019
BY Darren Stevenson

Boris Johnson’s suggestion of an “amnesty for tens of thousands of illegal immigrants”, as the Daily Mail puts it, has ruffled some right-wing feathers, but would it really revolutionise UK immigration policy? Johnson, who looks set to secure victory in the Conservative leadership race, told the paper he supported the...

10th July 2019
BY Karma Hickman

The government has asked a group of independent academic experts to look again at the Migration Advisory Committee’s proposal for a £30,000 minimum salary for a UK work visa post-Brexit. It has commissioned the, er, Migration Advisory Committee. In September 2018, the MAC published a major report on the future...

24th June 2019
BY CJ McKinney

Depending on which pundit you speak to, a no-deal Brexit has either got more likely or less likely over the last couple of weeks. It remains the default if the UK-EU withdrawal agreement is not passed at the third time of asking, and a further extension is not agreed by...

26th March 2019
BY Iain Halliday

The UK government has confirmed what was suspected (and what the Home Office has hinted at in private talks): in the event of a no-deal Brexit, free movement will end on 29 March 2019. EU citizens arriving after this date face a new temporary system. The Immigration and Social Security...

29th January 2019
BY Chris Desira

There is so much in the immigration white paper, publishedjust before Christmas, that sounds pretty good for employers. But if the sponsorship system is to cope when extended to cover skilled workers arriving from the EU, a huge amount of work will be needed to simplify it. The white paper confirms...

9th January 2019
BY Nichola Carter

There is one, overwhelming, message from the immigration White Paper published on 19 December. It is mentioned in the Foreword by the Prime Minister, and the Foreword from the Secretary of State for the Home Department. The aims of the White Paper are: to bring an end to free movement...

21st December 2018
BY ILPA

The government has published its plan spelling the end of free movement. A long-awaited white paper on post-Brexit migration proposes that EU workers would in future have to earn a minimum salary in a job requiring A-level qualifications or above to be sponsored for a UK work visa. “Low-skilled” workers...

19th December 2018
BY CJ McKinney

Mass confusion following the immigration minister’s evidence (full transcript here) to the Home Affairs committee yesterday: this was a terrible appearance by Caroline Nokes @CommonsHomeAffs yesterday. Sajid Javid needs to go back as a matter of urgency; give clear answers and put out the govt’s No Deal advice on citizens asap...

31st October 2018
BY CJ McKinney

I’ve been working on a submission to the Windrush lessons learned review. The final date for submission of evidence is 19 October 2018 and I’d urge anyone interested in immigration policy to consider putting in a response, no matter how short. I’ll be sending in this submission, with any amendments,...

15th October 2018
BY Colin Yeo

After months of uncertainty we finally have a picture emerging of what the post-Brexit immigration system will look like. We have known for some time that after we leave the EU on 29 March 2019, the plan is to enter a transition period until 31 December 2020 which will see...

3rd October 2018
BY Joanna Hunt

Sajid Javid delivered a speech today at the Conservative party conference that is likely to generate headlines for what he had to say on immigration, integration and citizenship. Upon closer inspection, there is less substance to these pronouncements than meets the eye and nothing on serious issues like child registration...

2nd October 2018
BY CJ McKinney
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