Overview

This book is an inquiry into the development of migration policy in the United Kingdom from May 1997 to May 2007. The aim of this book is to survey, analyse and evaluate such developments in order to present new insights into this period of policy making.

Lurid headlines on every aspect of migration have been a consistent feature of the last decade, from worries over asylum seekers to concerns over unprecedented economic migration from Eastern Europe. Such headlines reflect the passions and deep anxieties that migration has aroused. MORI (2007), for example, has ranked race and immigration as among the top three most important issues facing Britain in nearly every one of its monthly opinion polls since 2003.

Labour – in power throughout this time – has made efforts to respond to such concerns. In October 2001, David Blunkett stated to Parliament that he wanted ‘to introduce radical and fundamental reform’ (Hansard, 29 October 2001, col 627). Three years later, Tony Blair said ‘we have begun a top-to-bottom analysis of the immigration system’ because the issue had reached a ‘crunch’ point (Blair, 2004a) and six months after that, Charles Clarke could be heard on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, laying out the need for ‘urgent reform’ to the immigration and asylum system (BBC News, 2004). Then, in 2006, John Reid stated that a ‘fundamental overhaul’ of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate must be carried out (BBC News, 2006a)

Labour has gone beyond rhetoric; it has put migration at the centre of its legislative programme. In the ten-year period under consideration, Labour passed four parliamentary Acts, and at the time of writing a fifth Bill is going through Parliament.

The backdrop to such passions and pronouncements has been the increasing numbers of immigrants. The absolute and net numbers have both risen. For example, the inflow of migrants coming to the UK for more than one year rose from 326,100 in 1997 to 582,100 in 2004 while the net inflow increased from 46,800 to 222,600 (Home Office, 2006f, p 95). Net immigration is predicted to continue at 145,000 per year (GAD, 2007). The following graph lays out net immigration flows to the UK over the last 35 years.

According to the 2001 Census, the UK has a foreign-born population of 4.9 million or 8.3 per cent of the total population (ONS, 2007).