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Immigration was a key, if not the key issue in the referendum of 2016. The last few years have seen the biggest shakeup in the UK migration system in at least half a century, coinciding with record levels of immigration across all the main routes – work, students and refugees.
This report explores what has happened to immigration, immigration policy and public attitudes towards immigration since the Brexit vote. It examines the way in which the UK government has reacted to the ending of free movement, and explores the impact of new policies on immigration levels.
It represents a state-of-the-art analysis of what has happened, where we have got to, and what might transpire in the future.
The last few years have seen the biggest shakeup in the UK migration system in at least half a century, coinciding with record levels of immigration across all the main routes – work, students and refugees. In our new report, we explore what has happened to immigration policy and immigration trends since the Brexit vote – and what might happen next.
Immigration, and in particular free movement, was a key driver of the vote to leave the European Union. However, although most voters expected Brexit to result in a fall in immigration, Vote Leave’s commitment was to end free movement and to introduce a new system for work migration that does not discriminate by country of origin and that prioritises skilled work.
The system introduced in January 2021 does broadly that, with skill and salary thresholds that mean that in principle non-UK residents can qualify for a Skilled Work Visa for most high- and middle-skill jobs. The initial impact of this has been to reduce migration in sectors that were previously reliant on relatively lower skilled and lower paid workers from the EU, particularly hospitality and transport, aggravating labour shortages; we estimate that, compared to pre-pandemic trends, there is a shortfall of more than 400,000 EU-origin workers....
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