Starmer echoes the far-right rhetoric and promises to "take back control of the borders."

LondonA tough line and more demands to reduce legal immigration. Less than one year after coming to power, British Labour seems to have lost its way and is trying to get back on track by definitively abandoning progressive policies and adopting those of the far right. In short, this Monday the premier Keir Starmer implicitly pointed the finger at foreigners as responsible for the vast majority of the country's ills during the presentation of the long-awaited white paper on immigration. His government proposes tightening requirements for entry and settlement on the islands.

Starmer has thus promised to "significantly reduce" net immigration by the end of his term (July 2029), although he has not committed to giving a specific figure. Between June 2023 and 2024, it stood at 728,000 people, and the same previous period (2022-23) reached almost one million people.

The prime minister wants to avoid criticism from the party's left for the social cuts he has implemented under the guise of balancing the budget and is opting for the same demagogic drift as Nigel Farage's Reform Party, which won the local elections in England ten days ago. threatens the hegemony of the large traditional formations. A drift and a rhetoric that many analysts identify with the riots last summer in different cities across the country, following the murder of three boys while participating in a summer recreation program in the north of the country.

A suspended Labour MP and highly critical of the government, Zarah Sultana, called Starmer's speech "fueling decades of racism and division that adds to the anti-immigrant rhetoric that puts lives at risk." And fellow MP Nadia Whittome, from the left wing of the party, denounced the tone of the speech and warned of the dangers of this policy. "The government's escalation of anti-immigrant rhetoric is shameful and dangerous. Migrants are our neighbors, friends, and family. Suggesting that the country could become 'an island of foreigners' due to immigration plays into the scaremongering of the far right."

Under the new rules, immigrants will have to live in the UK for a decade before being able to apply for citizenship. This change will not affect people who make a "genuine and lasting contribution" to the economy or society, who will be able to obtain permanent settlement rights on an accelerated basis. In addition, all new arrivals through any of the established routes – family reunification, work or study – will have to pass more rigorous English language tests, including dependents.

In presenting these reforms, Starmer, who had tirelessly defended holding a second Brexit referendum, used the rhetoric of the leavers and has literally adopted the same message as in 2016 favored the break with the European Union. A way to campaign for Nigel Farage, who promotes clean immigration of zero people. In his appearance, the premier has explained that it is about "taking back control of the borders", a slogan used by both Farage (then leader of UKIP) and former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, leader of the Conservative campaign.

The reality, however, is that since Brexit the number of immigrants arriving through legal channels has quadrupled, to the aforementioned record of almost one million in 2023. Of the entries until 2024, only 10% came from the EU and from Sudan, Norway. Although Starmer always refused to put a figure on the "significant reduction", the white paper The Ministry of the Interior estimates that the new regulations could reduce the number of migrants annually by one hundred thousand.

The question Labour must now ask itself is whether it can stop Nigel Farage by adopting his same rhetoric while cutting social rights, such as energy subsidies for the less fortunate, as he did last winter. The Reform Party leader was quick to attack the reform. In a tweet, he said: "On the day of Keir Starmer's big backlash against the Reform Party, at 8am, there are already 250 young people crossing the Channel. How many of them are Iranian terrorists?" Once again, he has identified undocumented immigration with suspected criminals and equates new cross-Channel arrivals with those crossing the UK border legally.

"The Island of Foreigners"

Not content with embracing Brexit demagoguery, the Labour leader went so far as to say that the current system "was almost designed to allow abuse," and that without strengthening the rules for entering the country, they risk becoming "an island of foreigners." Starmer has thus asserted that he will put an end to the social "experiment" that has dominated British politics for the last quarter of a century. An experiment that, in the introduction to the white paper, premier He claims it has caused "incalculable damage." He lists the problems, stating: "Public services and access to housing have come under undue pressure, and our economy has been distorted by perverse incentives to import labor rather than invest in the same skills [as British people]."

Experts and data, however, refute these claims. King's College professor Jonathan Portes asserts that "the vast majority of immigrants contribute to the economy: they pay taxes, they pay university fees, they help growth, they contribute to the funding of public services." "And we have quite a bit of evidence that, overall, the net economic impact of immigration is positive: migrants give back more than they take back," he said in an appearance on the BBC.

The Labour reform also provides for a ban on hiring foreign workers for the social care sector, starting at the end of this year. Nursing homes will be prohibited from doing so, and in any case, will have to fill vacant places either with Britons or with foreigners already in the United Kingdom. This demand has already caused alarm among nursing home employers, who are unable to find staff in the country to meet their needs.

Foreigners are also threatened with expedited deportation if they commit minor crimes. Any infraction committed by a foreign national in the United Kingdom will be reported to the Home Office, and not just those that carry a prison sentence, as currently stipulated by the regulations. In practice, this opens the door for migrants to be expelled from the United Kingdom for less serious offenses, such as stealing food from supermarkets.

A university degree will be required for skilled workers, a requirement that was abolished by Boris Johnson's government. Employers will still be able to hire unskilled workers through the points-based system, but only in critical sectors—laborers, for example. The white paper also plans to force foreign graduates to leave the UK unless they find graduate-level employment, based on skill levels rather than pay. Some of the changes will require legislative changes and cannot come into force before next year.