Modern immigration to the United Kingdom
[2] In 2021, since Brexit came into effect,[a] previous EU citizenship's right to newly move to and reside in the UK on a permanent basis does not apply anymore.
As of 2013, 7.5 million people (11.9% of the population at the time) were born overseas, although the census gives no indication of their immigration status or intended length of stay.
[13][14] A points-based system is composed of five tiers was first described by the UK Border Agency as follows: Though immigration is a matter that is reserved to the UK Government under the legislation that established devolution for Scotland in 1999, the Scottish Government was able to get an agreement from the Home Office for their Fresh Talent Initiative which was designed to encourage foreign graduates of Scottish universities to stay in Scotland to look for employment.
In the lead-up to World War II, many people from Germany, particularly those belonging to minorities which were persecuted under Nazi rule, such as Jews, sought to emigrate to the United Kingdom, and it is estimated that as many as 50,000 may have been successful.
[citation needed]At the end of the Second World War, substantial groups of people from Soviet-controlled territories settled in the UK, particularly Poles and Ukrainians.
[24] The heavy numbers of migrants resulted in the establishment of a Cabinet committee in June 1950 to find "ways which might be adopted to check the immigration into this country of coloured people from British colonial territories".
A majority of the Pakistani immigrants to UK trace their origin to Mirpur district in the region presently called Azad Kashmir.
It amounts altogether to one-quarter of the population of the globe and at present there are no factors visible which might lead us to expect a reversal or even a modification of the immigration trend.
[42]The new Act required migrants to have a job before they arrived, to possess special skills or who would meet the "labour needs" of the national economy.
To manage this exodus from the former East African colonies, the Home secretary James Callaghan under a Labour party government introduced a bill in February 1968, and got it passed within a week.
[b] Enoch Powell gave the famous "Rivers of Blood" speech on 20 April 1968 in which he warned his audience of what he believed would be the consequences of continued unchecked immigration from the Commonwealth to Britain.
Conservative Party leader Edward Heath fired Powell from his Shadow Cabinet the day after the speech, and he never held another senior political post.
[50] At that time, 43% of junior doctors working in NHS hospitals, and some 30% of student nurses, were immigrants, without which the health service would needed to have been curtailed.
[51] The rules proposal drew criticism from Conservative Party backbenchers, because it formally implemented a limit of six months of leave to enter as a visitor for white "Old Commonwealth" citizens who were "non-patrial" (did not have Right of Abode under the 1971 act, generally because they did not have a parent or grandparent from the UK).
[51] Minutes from a Cabinet meeting the next day conclude that "anti-European sentiment" among backbenchers, who instead preferred "Old Commonwealth" migration to the UK, was at the core of the result.
The Conservative government nevertheless allowed, amid much controversy, the immigration of 27,000 individuals displaced from Uganda after the coup d'état led by Idi Amin in 1971.
[53] One of the Four Freedoms of the European Union, of which the United Kingdom is a former member, is the right to the free movement of workers as codified in the Directive 2004/38/EC and the EEA Regulations (UK).
Instead, restrictions were put in place to limit migration to students, the self-employed, highly skilled migrants and food and agricultural workers.
The former government adviser Andrew Neather in the Evening Standard stated that the deliberate policy of ministers from late-2000 until early-2008 was to open up the UK to mass migration.
[64][65] With the expansion of the EU on 1 May 2004, the UK has accepted immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe, Malta and Cyprus, although the substantial Maltese, Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot communities were established earlier through their Commonwealth connection.
[90] The effects of the migration crisis continue in public discourse beyond the 2010s, as evident in the racist and anti-immigration protests and riots that have increased following Brexit.
[104] However, in July 2010 the government was accused of back-tracking on this promise after the Immigration Minister Damian Green announced that the plan was to minimise, rather than end, child detention.
[107] In February 2003, Prime Minister Tony Blair promised on television to reduce the number of asylum seekers by half within 7 months,[108] apparently catching unawares the members of his own government with responsibility for immigration policy.
[112] Human rights organisations such as Amnesty International have argued that the government's new policies, particularly those concerning detention centres, have detrimental effects on asylum applicants[113] and their children,[114] and those facilities have seen a number of hunger strikes and suicides.
Others have argued that recent government policies aimed at reducing 'bogus' asylum claims have had detrimental impacts on those genuinely in need of protection.
In January 2018 the government repealed a law that previously allowed homeless detainees to apply for housing while in detention if they had nowhere to live when released.
[120] On 9 August 2020, the reports suggested that the number of people who reached the United Kingdom shores in small boats, during that year, surpassed 4,000.
[121] On 17 August 2021, the United Kingdom Government launched a new resettlement programme which aims to settle 20,000 Afghan refugees fleeing the 2021 Taliban offensive over a five-year period in the UK.
[125][126] That same year the government also launched a scheme for Hongkongers following the Hong Kong national security law, with an estimated thousands emigrating to the UK either as refugees, asylum seekers or under student visas.
[137] Analysis by the Institute for Public Policy Research suggested that an amnesty could net the government up to £1.038 billion per year in fiscal revenue, however the long term implications of such a measure are uncertain.
