Currently a comfortable 23 points ahead in opinion polls with just under three weeks to the general election, the Labour Party has published its election manifesto. Sectors of the economy […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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” […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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) […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
