Will Britain welcome Ukrainian refugees?

Immigration used to be the most-discussed issue in British politics. It gets less attention these days, for reasons too varied to go into here. But even though some voters have been focused on other things, there have been significant changes. Some have been good. Others bad. And the bad ones are about to collide with the Ukrainian crisis.

The positive bits of the immigration story have mainly been around regulated, economically-driven migration. Britain’s post-EU migration regime is, well, not as bad as it could have been. It’s not as easy as it was for EU nationals to come here to work, but it’s a bit easier for non-EU nationals to enter. The overall effect has been less a tightening of entry rules than a rebalancing. The pandemic is obviously clouding the data here, but — though they rarely say so openly — ministers appear to have no intention of doing anything that significantly reduces overall migration levels to the UK.