The government needs to win trust on legal migration

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For a few years, after the 2016 Brexit referendum promised that Britain would “take back control” of its borders, immigration faded as a public concern. Now, with the government not only struggling to control “illegal” migrants crossing the Channel in small boats, but facing a rise in the net migration to record levels, the topic has returned to the top three issues voters cited. It’s opening new faults in a Conservative party crippled by a possible electoral defeat next year – and pushing ever more provocative language from its right wing.

With some sectors clamoring for workers, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has sought to win public acquiescence in legal immigration by toughening illegal immigration, making “stopping boats” one of his five pledges for 2023. i migrants defied efforts to rein them in, Downing Street has given Home Secretary Suella Braverman license to adopt ever more extreme methods and language. She is pushing through a bill that would prevent anyone entering Britain on small boats or without prior authorization from seeking asylum. The Archbishop of Canterbury called him “morally unacceptable”.

This makes it all the more complicated for the government that Thursday’s data should show net migration skipped last year, perhaps to more than 700,000. While the numbers exceed previous expectations, this is the result of political choices: admitting people fleeing Afghanistan, Hong Kong and Ukraine, encouraging the admission of international students, and leaving employers largely free to fill highly paid from abroad, while limiting low paid immigration. The government has also opened up worker visas to help close recruitment gaps in the NHS and social care.

The numbers are set to go down as some temporary factors retreat. Without policy changes, however, they will remain relatively high, creating acute dilemmas for a government also seeking to stimulate growth, reduce inflation and repair services.

It should continue to allow migration through visa programs where strong economic and strategic reasons exist. While the government prohibits non-PhD international students from bringing along family members, it would be wrong to place broader limits on international students, who bring expertise and create value.

As long as the NHS staffing shortage remains acute, foreign workers will be vital, although Britain also needs to step up in-house training of health workers and begin to undo the decline in real wages over the last decade. It would be better to offer competitive wages for UK workers to carry out care work – which many Britons say they would if the pay were better – but governments have repeatedly shied away from reforms to ensure the sector is adequately funded.

If the Conservatives are serious about moving the UK economy away from a ‘low wage, low skills’ model, the government must resist calls from sectors such as hospitality to expand the list of shortages. These sectors will have to adapt over time, such as the trucking sector began to do.

Given public concerns, however — sparked in part by the political right — for Sunak to be able to go this far in involving key workers, he will need to win voter consent. That means finding ways to control small boats, ideally through cooperation rather than confrontation with EU neighbors, and showing that the EU government has control over overall immigration numbers. He must be more open in defending the cause of migrants who bring skills and fill gaps in services. And he has to rein in the alarmist talk ministers which, by blurring the line between legal and illegal migrants, threatens to poison the case of any immigration.