Why the UK’s illegal migration crisis is about to get a LOT worse

My thoughts on the Labour government’s latest proposals

JUL 25

READ IN APP

Matt Goodwin’s Substack goes to more than 38,000 subscribers across 160 countries, and thousands of paying supporters who make our work possible. Like our stuff? Then help us by becoming a paying supporter and access everything —the full archive, exclusive posts, polling, leave comments, join the debate, get discounts, advance notice about events, and the knowledge you’re supporting independent writers who are not afraid to push back against the grain. You can also join our community on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter/X.

If there was one issue that lost the Conservative Party the 2024 UK general election then it was immigration. It was the party’s decision to put mass legal immigration on steroids that led millions of conservative voters to either switch to Nigel Farage’s Reform party or give up on politics altogether.

And it was the party’s failure to stop the rising number of small boat crossings —bringing nearly 120,000 illegal migrants into Britain since 2018—which further alienated and angered the British people, making a mockery of the country’s claim to be a self-governing, independent nation with control over its own borders.

But now, ever since the election, it’s the turn of the new Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his Labour government to try and manage the immigration crisis. And what is clear, if you look at the detail, is that this crisis is about to get a lot worse.

Like the Conservatives before them, Labour find themselves caught between the promises they made to voters to get elected and what they really believe.

Labour know, as Tony Blair just warned them, that immigration is rocket fuel for Nigel Farage and Reform, and that in nearly 100 seats it is Reform, not the Tories, that is the main threat to Labour. If Labour fumble and fail on immigration then it will be Farage and Reform, not the Tories, taking seats off Labour.

But, at the same time, there are also strong interests pushing Labour to open the floodgates even wider, sending already historically unprecedented levels of mass immigration even higher, and further transforming the country.

While radical progressive activists inside the Labour Party do not believe in the concept of national borders and view any restriction on immigration as tantamount to ‘racism’, that sectoral interests are already leaning heavily on Labour.

Universities, many of them engulfed by a financial crisis, are desperate for cash from foreign students and don’t care that their typically low-quality, one-year postgraduate degrees are just a cover for more foreign students to come, live and work in Britain. This is why Labour is already hinting at removing restrictions on foreign students.

As soon as they were in office, within hours, Labour also got rid of the Rwanda plan and with it the £290 million that had been spent on it. Officials from the National Crime Agency who have spoken to me off the record say that the plan to relocate illegal migrants to Rwanda was the only real deterrent we had. But now that’s gone.

Then, shortly afterwards, Keir Starmer was gushing about how Britain would never leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) —the court whose rulings mean that we cannot actually deport foreign rapists and murderers out of the country.

And underlying much of this is what Labour MPs really think we should do with the many illegal migrants who are already in Britain. Rishi Sunak’s Illegal Migration Act meant those who arrived after it came into force could not claim asylum, creating a backlog of cases until they could be sent to Rwanda (or, more likely, agreed to return voluntarily to their countries of origin to avoid being sent there).

But with no Rwanda to go to, there is no option but to put these illegal migrants back in the system, here in Britain. And as about 60,000 of them come from countries that are unsafe to send them back to, they will almost certainly get asylum here in Britain.

Even those who do not are unlikely to be returned. While this will incentivise many more illegal migrants to head for Britain, it will also mean tens of thousands of mainly young, foreign men on our streets, many of whom have no educational qualifications, speak limited English, come from Islamic countries and hold very different values.

Just look at the very latest data on the age and sex distribution of migrants who are now entering Britain from the likes of Afghanistan, Eritrea, Nepal, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Bangladesh, and Sudan. The chart below really is striking…PAYWALL