Following on from the victory of Reform UK in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election and in the local elections, the Labour government has responded, with a speech by Keir Starmer on 12 May, speaking to the government white paper “Restoring control over the immigration system”. In a political environment already saturated with anti-immigration sentiment, Starmer’s speech served as what is likely the end of the comparatively more open immigration policy that emerged following Brexit. Along with this, the government seems prepared to lay the blame for stagnant economic growth, all manner of social division and the declining fortunes of British workers, on immigrants, irrespective of how this vindicates the growing far right.
What are the Government Plans?
The speech itself began bluntly with Starmer characterising his government’s new immigration white paper as representing a strategy to “finally take back control of our borders and end a squalid chapter for our politics, our economy, and our country”, one of many alarmist descriptions of the alleged damage caused by immigration. Much in particular has been made of the claim that without such restrictions on immigration Britain risks becoming “an island of strangers”, an identical phrase to one used in Conservative MP Enoch Powell’s notorious 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech.
Starmer used it in the context of arguing that the levels of immigration into Britain in recent years is threatening the existence of stable, cohesive communities. While the policies outlined in the white paper largely do not touch upon many of the supposed issues regarding the integration of migrants, this is clearly designed as a way of validating the fears of a section of the British population regarding the presence of migrants. This in particular impacts Muslim migrants from the Middle East and South Asia, who have been subjected for decades to a sustained campaign of attacks by the far right, fueled by the racist weaponisation of the crimes of “grooming gangs”, and cynically deployed arguments in favour of women’s rights, secularism, and other issues.
The speech also took a more explicitly economic angle, arguing for the end of an immigration system which has allowed the economy to become “addicted to importing cheap labour rather than investing in the skills of people who are here and want a good job in their community.” Alongside this is the claim that they will take any steps necessary to “release pressure on housing and our public services” caused by immigration.
In the midst of a speech generally characterised by the linking of social and economic problems to immigration, Starmer took a moment to briefly praise the “contribution” of migrants to Britain today and following the Second World War, and state that “Britain must compete for the best talent in the world in science, in technology, in healthcare”, highlighting how the clear focus of these new proposed restrictions is to be on lower-paid foreign workers.
Indeed, the white paper also very explicitly makes the link between the higher amounts of immigration and the increased number of workers living on benefits over the last 5-6 years, remarking that “at the same time as overseas recruitment, including of lower skilled workers, shot up, labour market participation by UK residents has dropped.” Here the crackdowns on immigration and on benefits claimants are clearly interlinked.
Alongside this, in characterising the policies of the previous Conservative governments as a “one-nation experiment in open borders”, the speech aimed to outflank both Reform and the Tories on their right, displaying the Labour government as decisive in apparently delivering “an immigration system that is fair, that works for our national interest”. The white paper is summed up finally as delivering “lower net migration, higher skills, backing British workers” and “repairing our social contract”.
The policies themselves amount to a drastic increase in the restrictions on the granting of visas to migrant workers and foreign students. Much of the legislation is designed to drastically cut the number of low-skilled workers. The level of qualification that will make you eligible for a work visa has been raised to a degree-level rather than an A-level equivalent qualification, along with the proposed removal entirely of the visa for social-care workers.
There is also a proposal for a set of requirements for businesses to invest in training up native-born workers in exchange for the recruitment of workers from abroad, along with a substantial increase in the Immigration Skills Charge, an effective tax placed on businesses sponsoring work visas for migrants. Greater enforcement of the existing immigration restrictions has also been promised, in particular in carrying out the deportation of “illegal immigrants” who reside in the UK without a visa. In particular, the white paper makes much fuss about the potential of electronic “eVisas” and biometric face scanning technology to allow for speedy deportations.
Policies that address the alleged lack of integration of migrant communities into British life are also represented by far stricter requirements for knowledge of the English language, both creating greater requirements for those seeking a work visa and introducing new requirements for those dependent on them. Study visas for international students are proposed to now be reduced to a limit of 18 months after graduation, along with the threat of sanctions and punishments for institutions who fail their sponsor duties for these students. Finally, the number of years before a migrant can acquire settled status in the UK is due to be doubled from 5 to 10 years, meaning that the minimum time period for a migrant worker to acquire British citizenship will be around 11 years rather than 6.
In responding to these proposals, we have to consider what these policies and Starmer’s speech reflect and are motivated by. The first motivation is plainly a matter of politics. The dramatic rise of Reform UK, and the present immense weakness of the Conservative Party provide the Labour government both with a major challenge and an opportunity. The government have plainly attempted to kill two birds with one stone, attempting to neutralise the issue of immigration which has driven the surge in support for Reform UK, and to further compound the loss of confidence in the Conservatives through being seen to have responded to the supposed “one-nation experiment in open borders” that has occurred post-Brexit.
In particular, though this is currently reflective less of the policies than the rhetoric of the government, the strategy of the government appears close to the Danish Social Democratic government, namely of “neutralising” the far right by adopting a large part of its immigration policy. It is true, however, that for now Labour appears reluctant to reflect the most lurid obsessions of the British far right, which stands strongly in contrast to the Danish Social Democrat’s full-throated support for policies banning face veils and endorsing the far right’s plans for the repatriation of asylum seekers.
There are also more general reasons for this shift among all the main parties of the ruling class. In an attempt to avoid or mitigate the political chaos that has engulfed so many of the major capitalist countries, the Labour crackdown on immigration appears likely to come with an attempt to draw up a new social contract between the native-born working class and the capitalist class. Through the pledge to push businesses to train up British workers in the sectors of the economy currently dependent on migrant labour, the attack on immigration represents an attempt to buy the loyalty of the working class from the fraying traditional parties of capitalist rule in Britain.
How should communists respond?
As communists, it must be said from the outset that we should resolutely oppose the politics espoused by the government regarding immigration. The primary reason for this follows on from the inescapable reality that capitalism is a global system, in which nation states are integrated into and dependent on a global market. It therefore becomes essential for the merger and unity of the socialist movement and the advanced layers of the working class to carry on across borders and continents. The establishment of a workers’ state in one country, breaking the chain of capitalist rule, must be followed with the working class coming to power in further countries. The alternative is almost inevitably the rapid isolation of the lone workers’ state, followed by domestic and international intervention from the capitalist class to restore their order.
Therefore anything which obscures the fundamental common interests of the whole working class, irrespective of nationality, must be exposed and opposed as an attempt to deceive the working class rather than emancipate it. Immigration controls, and the weaponisation of reactionary narratives against migrants, exist as a method for the ruling class to split the workers’ movement along national, ethnic, religious etc. lines. The result is to drive the working class of one nation towards nationalism, which inevitably ends up embodying itself as a cross-class coalition around the existing capitalist nation state, and thus the ruling class of any one nation.
In addition to this, anti-immigration politics serves other purposes. Currently, the anti-immigration backlash serves as a way of arguing that many of the problems of British capitalism, be it housing shortages, low economic growth or the decline of working class communities are the fault of immigration. This is reflected in the idea, unfortunately sometimes presented on the British left, that immigration should be cut or further restricted as a concession to native workers. It is argued that immigration, through expanding the reserve labour force, and with migrants often not being unionised and in a significantly more precarious position than British workers, serves as a way of driving down wages and conditions. A different but related argument is made in the government’s white paper when it says that “despite the significant increases in long-term migration over recent years, economic growth and living standards have stagnated.”
In both cases, the extent to which immigration has genuinely impacted either the wages of British workers or the level of economic growth should not change our fundamental position. In both cases these problems reflect the inescapable fact that capitalism is a system designed for the extraction of as much profit from the labour of the working class as possible. This is often an interest which is actively in conflict with higher wages for workers, or of the advancement of society at large. The increased dependence of British capital upon migrant workers is actually reflective of their unwillingness to invest the high capital costs required for the automation of significant amounts of production, something which has been acknowledged by more astute anti-immigration commentators in Britain, with the higher levels of automation in China, Japan and South Korea viewed as an alternative to large inflows of migrant workers.
Of course, as communists we recognise that this problem cannot be reduced to a series of “bad choices”, but is something which reflects the corrosive effect that increased capital costs have on the rate of profit, pushing capitalists towards lowering costs and avoiding capital-intensive forms of production. High levels of migration therefore do not constrain the living standards of workers nor new, more efficient forms of production. The cause of this is instead with the rule of a capitalist class whose interests grow evermore distant from those of the rest of society.
Similarly, the problems claimed to be the result of the failure of migrants to integrate, again treat immigration itself as the cause of a more general issue. The far right have for decades now latched onto the idea that certain migrants, particularly those from the Middle East, South Asia and Africa (in particular Muslim migrants from these regions) represent an inherent threat to the values of British society. In an attempt to evidence this, they cite the various terror attacks that have taken place in the name of Islamic fundamentalism since 9/11, the examples of “grooming gangs” in which the perpetrators have been Muslim, and evidence of generally higher prevalence of socially conservative attitudes among Muslims in Britain as compared to the population at large on issues such as women’s and LGBT rights, the role of religion in society, and other issues.
Much of the far right narrative, aside from being plainly cynical given the reactionary nature of their project, greatly exaggerates the extent to which Muslims in Britain represent an isolated section of British society. It should be said, however, that it is ultimately true that there is a section of migrants or descendents of migrants of an Islamic background who hold significantly more conservative attitudes, for example on the position of women in society, than the bulk of the population. With this being said, immigration restrictions do nothing to resolve this issue. A migrant with reactionary attitudes that does not end up in Britain will still exist, with these same attitudes, elsewhere in the world. Anyone with a sincere interest in opposing these tendencies and attitudes cannot seriously argue that more restrictive immigration controls would change anything whatsoever. Furthermore, the increased presence of reactionary, irrational ideas is not something that is reserved to one ethnic, national or religious group.
The alternative is to counter these ideas, not just with a criticism of religious sectarianism, patriarchal oppression and so on, but a tangible vision of an alternative which will prompt forms of organisation and unity that break through these issues. Communism, in standing for the emancipation of the entire working class regardless of ethnicity, nationality and religious background, is that alternative.
On the basis of this perspective, communists should oppose not just the latest round of immigration restrictions, but all restrictions on immigration. Additionally, the inequality in democratic rights between native and foreign born inhabitants should be removed. Rather than increasing the number of years it takes to receive settled status in the UK, this should be drastically decreased, along with a streamlined path to citizenship and the end of laws like the No Recourse to Public Funds status used to deprive migrants of key public services.
With this there is also the need to support every initiative to protect migrant communities from attacks against them, be they from the growing far right or the state itself. The frenzy whipped up by the political class of all hues could very conceivably be the pretext for more organised violence like the rioting of July and August 2024. Any threat of this will require the mobilisation and organisation of the workers’ movement to protect migrant communities from the organised street movements of the far right. Similarly, collective action and legal campaigns to prevent the deportation of migrants should receive our full and active support.
Ultimately, however, the current sea of anti-migrant politics in Britain reflects the total absence of communists as a force within society. The lack of a mass party, or even any single organisation that could exert significant pull on its own, leaves issues like immigration to be decided among the political representatives of the ruling class and parties such as Reform UK. With unity among communists under a common programme, we can begin to present a clear alternative to the nationalistic, xenophobic politics dominant elsewhere.