On Monday, July 3rd, a group of 25 backbench Conservative MPs known as the New Conservatives offered up a 12-point immigration plan for the UK, which they say could reduce immigration levels by as much as 400,000 per year.
The group calls on the government to close temporary work visa schemes for care workers and senior care workers, which they say could reduce long-term international migration (LTIM) by as much as 82,000, while raising the skilled work visa threshold to £38,000 could reduce LTIM by a further 54,000.
Students in the UK are allowed to stay up to two years in the UK without a job offer following graduation. The New Conservatives state that closing this “graduate route” would reduce LTIM by around 50,000.
Alongside the restrictions on visas, the New Conservatives also want to cap the number of refugees accepted for resettlement in the UK at 20,000 per year, with exceptions to the rule being made in case of emergency, such as a war breaking out or some sort of natural disaster.
Housing is also an issue brought up by the MPs, who want the government to limit the amount of social housing given to non-UK nationals to just 5%, until the waiting list of British families is cleared.
The MPs state:
The policies primarily focus on raising standards for entry into the UK. They seek to raise standards in terms of income requirement, but also in terms of university course quality. They also seek to close existing loopholes that allow dependents to access the UK job market by the backdoor, not subject to the same standards as other applicants.
The New Conservatives are taking a stand with respect to unprecedented levels of immigration to the UK. The number of illegal migrants travelling across the English Channel from France has set records several years in a row and could reach a projected high of 65,000 by the end of 2023.
The British government—under Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s leadership—is now under particular duress since a top court rejected a government plan to send illegals to facilities in Rwanda last week, arguing that the deportation plan was unlawful.
“There is a real risk that persons sent to Rwanda will be returned to their home countries where they face persecution or other inhumane treatment when, in fact, they have a good claim for asylum,” the court said.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has promised to not only tackle the illegal migrant crisis in the English Channel but to carry through with the Tory promise to reduce overall migration, which stands as high as one million people per year overall.
Earlier this year, Sunak stated his goal was to bring migration down to at least 500,000 per year, far above the 220,000 promise the Conservatives made in their 2019 manifesto.
“I’m committed to bringing down the levels of migration that I inherited, and I’m relentlessly focused on stopping the boats, that’s one of my five priorities, and we’re doing absolutely everything we can to do that,” Sunak said.
The New Conservatives ambitious plan has received some pushback. Miriam Cates MP, a member of the New Conservatives, clashed with BBC presenter Mishal Hussain over the alternative migration plan’s goals to reduce immigration on Monday.
Cates argued that the UK does not need more foreign labour when there are around five million “economically inactive” people in the country.
“But they don’t want to work in care, so who does those jobs?“ Hussain countered, with Ms. Cates replying
Well they’re not going to work in care until we make the pay and conditions good enough, and the only way we’re going to do that is to cut off the supply of cheap labour from abroad.
Tory MP Tim Loughton criticised the aspect of the plan that would reduce temporary foreign care worker visas, arguing that the plan was correct in wanting to reduce overall numbers but that there was a real shortage of care workers in the UK.
Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, commented on the plan, saying that while there was nothing stopping the UK from being more restrictive on immigration, the plan did not look into trade-offs, such as the impact on university revenues from limiting international student visas, and called some of the proposals “a bit outlandish.”
The New Conservatives plan is being seen by some as a challenge to Prime Minister Sunak’s leadership within the Conservative Party, although the MPs, many of whom were elected in former Labour Party strongholds known as the “Red Wall,” may be fighting for their political survival with the move, as a recent poll showed Labour likely to regain many of the seats lost in 2019.
