Most of the recent Conservative and Labour governments – with the exception of Boris Johnson – have done their best to make the United Kingdom an unfriendly country for immigrants (workers, asylum seekers, and refugees), with the aim of discouraging them from settling here and preferring to try their luck in other European countries that treat them with more sympathy and humanity. But it has been Keir Starmer – about to leave Downing Street – who has achieved this.
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Net immigration (the difference between those arriving and leaving) has decreased by 82%, from almost one and a half million people in 2023 to 171,000 in 2025, as a result of much stricter conditions for obtaining visas, the requirement of a higher annual salary, the ban on students and public health employees bringing their families into the country, and the departure of foreign students since the pandemic.
These measures were initiated by Rishi Sunak’s government, but are taking effect under Starmer’s mandate, who has tightened the screws on immigration even further by aligning his agenda with that of the far right. A controversial law about to be submitted to the House of Commons proposes that foreigners must wait ten years instead of five to obtain permanent residence (which grants the right to live, study, and work) and to receive social benefits. It also reduces the right of appeal when political asylum requests are denied, increases legal costs for those who choose that route to the point of making it almost unfeasible, and reduces the pathways to settle legally.
The sponsor of these measures is the current Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, favored to keep the position when Andy Burnham becomes the new British Prime Minister next week. The Labour left wing considers them contrary to the country’s traditional humanitarian spirit – long gone – and eighty MPs have written a letter to the soon-to-be new leader asking for them to be softened. However, a rebellion is very unlikely right after the regime change, because no one wants to fall out of favor so soon and many aspire to positions of responsibility in the Administration.
London has made life harder for refugees by closing twenty of the hotels where they were housed in recent months and relocating them to cheaper ones or to disused barracks and military facilities, in response to a far-right campaign that has persuaded many people that they are potential murderers, thieves, and rapists of their women and daughters who are treated with kid gloves while natives suffer insecurity, deterioration of public services, and the high cost of living.
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The new plan is that foreigners can only obtain permanent residence after ten years
A total of 16,500 refugees are victims of forced relocations, sometimes up to five hundred kilometers away, with the problems this entails for those who are studying and about to take exams, are disabled, or receive medical treatment in local clinics and hospitals. Human rights groups have raised their voices against the indifference of the Starmer Government, whose concern was to stop the bleeding of votes to the far right.
Burnham, who likes to please everyone, is considering the possibility that the extension of the waiting period for permanent residence will not apply retroactively but only to those who have arrived since 2024, after Boris Johnson opened the doors wide to immigrants from the former Commonwealth colonies and their families, to work in public health and study at British universities (that, after proclaiming in the Brexit campaign that the goal was to “control the borders”).
Boris Johnson wanted Brexit to “control the borders” but opened the country’s doors wide
Although the United Kingdom has drastically reduced net immigration, what it has not managed to cut is the arrival in inflatable boats across the English Channel, even though it pays money to France to monitor its beaches. Last Friday, 128 people entered by this route in a small boat (a record number to date), and so far this year there have been 13,489 individuals, who will probably spend years unable to work, living in hotels or military facilities, waiting for their cases to be processed.
The Starmer Government has severely reduced the grounds for refugee family reunification, and it is estimated that 16,500 cannot claim their wives and children. The new rules require sponsorship from communities willing to bear the costs of their integration, and guarantees that immigrants “respect the laws and contribute to the economy.” The outgoing Prime Minister has failed at everything except making the United Kingdom such an unfriendly country that far fewer foreigners come.
