Immigration has long been one of the hottest political potatoes. How does the EU touch on the topic?

Jack Connolly is a senior official with the UK Border Agency.  He tells us he’s seen some big changes for the better since 2010.

‘Once we were out of the EU, the government quickly set up bilateral agreements with the EU, the US, and Commonwealth states, and workforce mobility hasn’t been disrupted at all.  The government took a leaf from the Canadians’ book and set up a points system that recognises the kind of skills we need and can be tuned to whatever demands there are in a particular year.   For instance, this year the list is topped by medical professionals but last year it was forestry workers and before that, electrical engineers for that new motorbike production plant.  We don’t get the problems we used to get before 2010 when workers from here would down tools over contractors bringing in people from other EU countries for jobs the local workforce could have done just as well.’

From Jack’s point of view, his job is much less fraught than it used to be. ‘Before the change,’ he says, ‘the public didn’t really trust us to protect them from illegals and the traffickers who exploited the EU system.’ 

What about asylum seekers, we ask? 

‘Asylum policy is a lot more transparent now.  People can see how it’s being done.  It’s efficient and judicial review is quick, decisive, and not affected by the pressures from Brussels.  We don’t keep applicants hanging around, certainly not if they have a skill set where they can be contributing to the economy while their case is reviewed rather than spending years waiting on the dole.’
  
Back before 2010 there had been a lot of media attention given to the political fallout around immigration and asylum. This was because of an unhealthy combination of several key factors.

In the first place, the Government seemed to be incapable of managing immigration, unlike successful historic migrant economies such as Canada or Australia. For instance, it underestimated the number of Eastern Europeans migrants coming to Britain after EU enlargement by a factor of 1000 per cent. The discovery of illegal immigrants working in airports, alongside Gordon Brown’s car, and in the Home Office building itself, made a very public fool of the department.

‘Secondly, the public perception was that there must be very large numbers of illegal immigrants in the country because the government was self-evidently incapable of providing an exact figure.

‘Thirdly, it was clear that public services, particularly transport and education, were already approaching capacity in the South East, and ministers did not appear to be taking migration statistics into account for future planning.

‘Fourthly, there was a belief that the legal service was weighted in the favour of those trying to abuse the system, and was indeed rewarding some of  their solicitors, while those who were genuine asylum seekers in fear of their family’s lives, were disadvantaged.

‘Fifthly, there were widely publicised cases, driven by the European Courts with Strasbourg in the lead, where deportations authorised by the UK courts were halted, judges ruling that even if claimants were flown back to a safe part of their home country, they might somehow still be at risk. It made it more ridiculous that destinations Brits happily travelled to on holiday were among the countries barred. It also made Brits angry that in some cases asylum seekers were clearly travelling a lot further than they needed to in order to reach a safe country. Something was clearly wrong with the British system if Calais was merely a transit point for refugees.

Mr Connolly concludes with some words of context.  ‘People today just don’t realise how bad it was getting in the early 2000s with extremists even getting elected to public office. The break with the EU policy has rescued the UK from this mess.’