With polling day almost upon us, Marius Holtan – a recent arrival himself – rounds up the parties’ policy promises on migration into the UK.
David Cameron and the Conservative Party promise to lower immigration to ‘tens of thousands’ compared to the approximately 300 000 migrants who have been entering the UK each year.
The Conservatives’ plans also include barring immigrants from claiming benefits during their first four years in the country.
As well as reducing benefit entitlement, one of the Tories’ proposed changes is to limit EU migrants’ freedom of movement — to which Angela Merkel replied that she would rather see the UK leave the union altogether.
The Labour Party acknowledges having made mistakes in the past, but remains insistent that ‘immigration is important for Britain’s future’.
Labour’s Ed Miliband suggest a two year period of not being able to claim benefit, strengthened border controls, and stronger penalties for the exploitation of low-skilled immigrants by contractors and gang-masters.
Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats are openly supportive of immigration, but they suggest restricting immigrants’ access to universal credits payments to six months only — and only allowing access after six months in the country. Other proposed changes include restriction of in-work benefits and child benefit for children living abroad. The party promises to support high-skilled immigration and provide efficient processing of family and tourist visas.
UKIP is committed to setting up a Migration Control Commission, with the goal of reducing net immigration. Party leader Nigel Farage also wants to curtail the number of European immigrants by taking the UK out of the EU (this would put EU migrants back into the ‘rest of the world’ queue at border control). The party has suggested a visa system based on the Australian model, with preference given to Commonwealth citizens. Police would get more technology to identify illegal immigrants, there would be no amnesty for illegal immigrants and criminals would lose any right to remain.
The Green Party maintains that migration policies should not discriminate based on race, colour, religion, political views, disabilities, sex or sexual orientation — nor should desirable skills be grounds for preferential treatment. The Greens would offer the right to remain to illegal immigrants who have stayed in the country for more than five years. They see this as upholding a proud tradition of providing asylum, education and human rights to people who come to Britain in difficult circumstances.
Across the UK parties there is a trend towards stricter immigration policies – this is consistent with hardening attitudes towards immigration throughout the EU.