James Kirkup James Kirkup

Will Britain welcome Ukrainian refugees?

(Getty)

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.

The public has been content with this and also content for several million EU nationals already in the UK to settle here. Likewise, there has been a pretty generous offer to settle Hong Kong residents: Britain has effectively given five million Hong Kongers a pathway to settle here — and voters haven’t blinked. As someone who has long taken a liberal position on immigration issues, this is all fairly cheering. It certainly disproves the doom-laden predictions made by some of my fellow Remain voters that Brexit would make Britain hostile to immigration and immigrants. As long as they’re regular migrants, moving for formally economic reasons, Britain has been fair and receptive.

The negative bits of the immigration story are around the other routes people follow to reach the UK. When it comes to irregular migration (boats in the Channel), asylum and refugees, policy and public debate has got worse.

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