On Monday 24 May, home secretary Priti Patel laid out the next steps in her department’s plan to ‘overhaul’ the UK immigration system. It followed proposals earlier this year to rip up the UK’s refugee protection principles. The next phase of her plans focuses on work, study and family migration routes to the UK and, significantly, seeks to digitalise a huge number of Home Office processes, including ‘hostile environment’ status checks when accessing both public and private services.
Public attitudes towards immigration have in fact significantly softened in the last few years, and overall the immigration has dropped down the public’s list of top priority issues. In this context, Patel had an opportunity to make the sensible, humane changes that are needed, especially when focusing on the relatively popular groups of skilled migrant workers and students.
Instead, she is dedicated to returning the public conversation to where it was before the 2016 Brexit referendum, by rehashing old announcements, throwing in some additional technological fantasies, and attacking anyone who disagrees with her approach as simply “seeking to sow dissent”.
