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In the early 2000s, one in 12 of the British population was born abroad. Now that figure is closer to one in six—higher than even America, the proverbial land of immigrants. And the number is still rising rapidly; over the last two years, almost 2 million people have moved to the U.K.
How did this happen? Wasn’t Brexit, in large part, a revolt against high levels of immigration? As Donald Trump put it shortly after the June 2016 referendum, “They’re angry over borders, they’re angry over people coming into the country and taking over.”
In fact, Brexit did lead to a far more restrictive immigration system for E.U. citizens that meant they could no longer live and work in the U.K. without a visa. But, nervous about the negative economic consequences of such a move—and hoping to make a reality of “Global Britain”—Boris Johnson’s government made it far easier to permit people from everywhere else to come to the U.K.
The salary and skills thresholds were lowered considerably for immigrants (though it is being hiked again), and a cap on the number of arrivals was abolished. What this meant was that half of all jobs in the U.K. are now above the income threshold, and employers can in principle hire anyone from anywhere in the world. This meant the U.K., overnight, moved to having one of the most liberal approaches to work-related migration among advanced economies, comparable to Canada and Australia, and a sharp contrast with the U.S. visa system for skilled work visas, which is more complicated and more restrictive, and has quotas for the main categories.
Read More: Biden’s Rightward Shift on Immigration Draws Comparisons to Trump
The result has been a complete reorientation of U.K. migration flows—away from Europe toward other countries, especially India and Nigeria; the number of workers from these two countries has more than doubled, compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic, in sectors and occupations from care workers to IT consultants….
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