Think tanks publish reports on changes in the UK's immigration landscape
Two interesting recent reports by think tanks on the changing immigration landscape in the UK are worth highlighting.
A new report published last week by the Social Market Foundation (SMF), which describes itself as a cross-party, centre-ground think tank, argues that the UK may be entering a new era of high immigration.
The 63-page report, Routes to resolution: Finding the centre ground in Britain's immigration debates, can be downloaded here.
As the report notes, November's migration statistics by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimated that immigration to the UK was a record 1.1 million in the year ending June 2022. The ONS noted at the time that the large increase in immigration was due to unprecedented events, while commentators, including the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, highlighted that it should not be expected to become a new normal.
Jonathan Thomas, the SMF's migration researcher and the author of the new report, argues that the ONS' record estimate could signal the start of a trend in the UK towards historically high migration levels in the coming decades.
Thomas said: "Current high levels of migration could well be the norm rather than the exception. Over the longer term the UK's deep historical connections with some of the most populated countries across the globe – India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Bangladesh – have the potential to create far more sizeable flows of people to the UK than the smaller and stagnating populations of the EU ever realistically could."
According to the report, the UK's ageing population and the country's skills shortages will continue to drive high demand for migrant workers. The SMF notes that credible academic forecasts predict a near tripling of the number of first-generation immigrants in the UK over the next three decades.
James Kirkup, the SMF's director, says immigration is going to be a major part of British national life in the decades ahead. As a result, a deeper national debate is needed about what that will mean.
Kirkup said last month following the Chancellor's Autumn statement: "The Government's entire economic plan now relies on a forecast of net immigration at more than 200,000 a year, around 50% higher than the numbers used in previous forecasts. … It's good that the Treasury has accepted the economic reality that an open approach to immigration brings benefits to the UK, but ministers now need to start an open and honest conversation with voters about that economic reality. Voters with concerns about immigration should be listened to and policy must ensure that they feel they share in the economic benefits that migration brings."
The SMF emphasised in its new report: "The case for labour immigration thus needs to be clearly presented as supplementing, not supplanting, what the UK domestically already has, or realistically could have, available. The value of a more open approach to labour immigration must be set out in a way that clearly acknowledges political and public concerns around the appropriate balance with other interests; is the UK investing enough in the skills base of its school leavers? Or sufficiently in its re-training its elder workers? Or in overlooked categories of the under-employed?"
Meanwhile, the progressive Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) think tank released a new report last month which finds that the attitudes of the British public to immigration have warmed considerably in recent years. You can download the 40-page report here.
Co-authored by IPPR's Marley Morris and Manchester University's Professor Robert Ford, the report explores how public attitudes have changed and what this means for the current politics of immigration.
The report explains: "For much of the past two decades, migration policy has been a source of intense political debate and division. Public concerns over immigration have played a critical role in determining government policy and communications. New legislation seeking to address these concerns has come thick and fast … But even as anxieties about immigration were reshaping elite politics and policy, a sea change was occurring in the public – the anxieties themselves were fading away. Over the past decade, there has been a sustained and broad-based positive shift in immigration attitudes. The public are now more relaxed about current immigration levels and more positive about the impacts of migration than at any time for decades. In many cases, attitudes are now more positive than at any point since reliable polling began. This striking and sustained shift in how the public views immigration fundamentally changes the politics of this often polarising issue."
According to the report, the percentage of people in the UK in favour of maintaining or increasing immigration is currently at an all-time high. The report adds that around half of the public now see immigration as having a positive economic and cultural impact on the UK, compared with a third in 2014, while a majority of people believe that immigration can help to drive economic recovery.
Views on immigration, however, have also become more polarised. The IPPR report notes attitudes among Labour voters have warmed considerably, but the views of Conservative voters remain similar to 2014. A liberal shift in attitudes is also evident among swing voters, which means a pro-immigration stance can be an electoral asset for Labour and has a broadly neutral electoral impact for the Conservatives.
Professor Ford says research for the report shows the British public value the social and economic contributions of immigrants and support reforms to better recognise these contributions through more open, flexible criteria for entry and easier pathways to settlement and citizenship.
In concluding the report, the authors said: "Our analysis of public opinion lends itself to an approach to immigration following the principle of 'rules-based openness'. The public expect there to be clear rules for immigration which are managed and administered effectively. But within these rules there is considerable support for an approach which treats people with compassion, rewards contribution, and helps integration. A new agenda which embodies this approach could help to rebuild public confidence in the immigration system and reshape the politics of immigration for the 2020s."