New Government, new immigration policies?

Official figures from the Office of National Statistics show that net migration into the UK has fallen significantly in the past few months. This is no doubt due to the various restrictions that were introduced by the previous Conservative Government in its dying months.

Curbs were introduced on students and care workers bringing dependants to the UK, required minimum salaries were sharply increased for Skilled Workers, and required minimum earnings for sponsors of partners and family members were also significantly increased.

It seems that these measures have had a cumulative effect.

It is very interesting to note that the new Labour Government – which says that net migration is too high – says that it has no plans to reverse any of these changes.

But on asylum issues the situation is different. The new Government has ditched the scheme to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda and, not only that, they have amended some of the previous Government’s legislation in this area. Various parts of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 have been amended in such a way that asylum claims that were stuck in the system are now being processed again and decisions will be made on these claims. The previous Government considered that these claims were inadmissible and wanted to remove the claimants to third countries, but there was nowhere to send them, and thus the claimants were stuck in limbo.

The new Government intends to re-organise the asylum system (yet again) and “stop the boats” (a familiar refrain). Well, we shall see what happens, but experience teaches us not to be too optimistic about this.

So, in any event, with general immigration and asylum there are two sharply different situations. With the former the new Government will reap the benefit of the previous Government’s measures (and may very probably, or so it says, introduce more measures of its own to further reduce inward migration). But with the latter they will at least partly dismantle the existing scheme.

Oliver Westmoreland

Senior Immigration Lawyer