Immigration

I was working in Johannesburg when I first got wind of the fact that Ireland has become an illegal back door to the UK. If you’re from a country such as South Africa, Swaziland, Lesotho, Fiji or Guyana, you need, not just a passport, but a prearranged visa, obtained from the local embassy for a fee, before you can even board a plane to Britain. It takes time, your details are checked, and you need to show a reason why you’ll go home at the end of your stay. In the 1980s most African nationals could come to Britain visa-free. But worries about terrorism and crimes committed once in the

The British government’s new white paper on immigration has been shaped by a social norm which argues that the white British ethnic majority’s interest in limiting the pace of cultural change and facilitating assimilation is racist. The emphasis on skills rather than numbers, on economic over cultural considerations, and on rebalancing immigration away from Europe speaks to this. The document reflects the thinking of both Brexit and Remain politicians. Yet it does not align with the motives of many who voted Leave, or a considerable chunk of those who voted Remain. These voters seek lower levels of immigration, and research shows that this is driven more by identity threat than

The first sign that Matteo Salvini was destined to do battle with Emmanuel Macron came in June, a few days after he was named Italy’s interior minister. Salvini, whose party, the League, wants to cut immigration drastically, announced that a German-registered rescue ship carrying 629 aspiring migrants from Africa would not be allowed to dock in Sicily. Macron reacted with disgust. ‘The policy of the Italian government,’ a spokesman for his political movement announced, ‘is nauseating.’ Salvini responded that if the French wanted to show their open–heartedness, they might make good on their unfulfilled pledge to feed and shelter some of the 100,000 African migrants Italy had until recently been

Last week, a 22-year old Swede called Elin Ersson made headlines around the world for her ‘citizen-activism’. Learning that a failed asylum seeker from Afghanistan was to be deported from her country, she bought a seat on the plane that was due to take him part of the way back home (as far as Turkey). Once she was on board the plane Ersson refused to sit down. Filming the whole thing on her mobile phone (natch) Ms Ersson insisted that to send the failed asylum-seeker to his home country would be consigning him to ‘death’ because Afghanistan is ‘hell’. After about 15 minutes of this Ms Ersson got her way.

When Sajid Javid became Home Secretary, he did so on the basis that he would be able to undo some of the political damage done by the ‘hostile environment policy’. Last night, he rather quietly announced that a key element of this policy would be paused, something Labour’s David Lammy immediately seized upon, hauling Javid’s junior Caroline Nokes to the Commons for an urgent question. Noakes insisted that this pause was ‘temporary’, adding that she would not give consent to the data sharing between government departments and other organisations until she was confident ‘that we will not be impacting on further members of the Windrush generation’. Lammy was largely unhappy

In the dark, foggy night that is the Brexit debate, immigration is the dog that has not yet barked. The Chequers agreement contains a promise to formally end free movement, but also to replace it with a “mobility agreement” that could well mean EU migration continues at more or less its current level. Would that provoke a furious public backlash? There are growing signs that some voters are more relaxed about immigration than at the time of the referendum, and more aware of its economic usefulness. Could Theresa May ask the British people to accept a fairly liberal European immigration regime? I hope so, and in this context I note

The government has finally climbed down on visa restrictions for foreign doctors and nurses, scrapping the cap on numbers who can be employed using the tier 2 visa route. This was costing NHS trusts shocking amounts of money in processing applications from overseas medical professionals which were in large part turned down by the Home Office. It is striking that the government decided this week to relax these restrictions, given they are part of the tough immigration policy introduced by Theresa May. Time was when the then Home Secretary would repeatedly upbraid David Cameron for handing her a net migration target to deliver which her Cabinet colleagues were frequently trying

What I remember about preparing to leave for my husband’s appointment with the Home Office in Croydon in 2007 is hysteria. A tizzy was not unprecedented; in our household, it’s always the man who’s in a dither, seeing to last-minute primping and chronically unable to get out the door on time. But on this occasion I, too, was rattled, snapping impatiently as I double-checked an enormous bag of documents. A fair bit was at stake. An American, I had acquired my own Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) — a grand designation for ‘residency’ that only the British would coin — during a looser era of the Writers and Artists Visa,