UK Immigration

Have foreign people always lived in the UK? When did this start, and why did they come? Immigration has been a feature of human activity as far back as history can document. Let's take a look at which groups and nationalities have decided to come to the UK, when and why they arrived, and the current state of UK Immigration.

UK Immigration: History

Movement in and out of the UK is not something new. The table below represents some of the major groups that have immigrated and emigrated in the last couple of thousand years.¹

Let's examine some of these groups and determine the factors that contributed to their movement.

Normans and Jews

Victory at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 brought the Normans, or Norsemen, from continental Europe and supplanted the rule of the Anglo-Saxons. They have left a lasting legacy with the introduction of the English language, a combination of Anglo-Saxon, Norman, and French. In addition, William the Conqueror invited Jews to be administrators and lenders as he overhauled how the country ran.

Religious Persecution

After the Reformation of the Christian church in the sixteenth century, Britain was a Protestant country, particularly once the ruling Stuart family arrived from Scotland. However, large swathes of Europe remained Catholic. As such, Britain represented a haven for Protestants fleeing religious persecution in Catholic lands. The most notable were the Huguenots, who hailed mainly from France. Persecution of Jews also took place during this time, and similar asylum was afforded to them by Britain.

Industrial and Colonial Britain

During the Industrial Revolution and the nineteenth century, there was much internal migration from the rural areas of England and Wales to the industrial strongholds in the northwest. 1840 was also the height of Irish migration to Britain, as they sought to escape their (mostly English) landowners in Ireland in search of better economic opportunities amid growing industry.

Fig. 1 - Arms of the East India Company (1914).

With the establishment of the East India Company in 1600, the role of trade also led to immigrants from the British Raj in modern-day India. Indian nannies were brought over for wealthy families. Similarly, the Royal Africa Company was in the business of buying, transporting and selling people. Enslaved Africans that had not been sold to the United States were used as servants for the wealthiest echelons of society in the nineteenth century.

Post-Commonwealth Immigration

The UK ceded its colonies in the 1950s and the 1960s. This coincided with the need to rebuild a postwar country battered by the Blitz in 1940. The subsequent need for a larger workforce resulted in almost half a million immigrants, now referred to as the Windrush generation, coming from former colonies in the Caribbean between 1948 and 1970.

Fig. 2 - Idi Amin ran an oppressive regime in Uganda throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

Furthermore, the UK welcomed around 200,000 Hungarians and other political dissidents after the Soviet Union's violent response to their 1956 uprising. Other push factors included the Mangla Dam disaster in Pakistan in 1962, which caused devastating floods and forced the migration of Pakistanis as refugees.

In addition, other immigrants from South Asia arrived, sometimes via East Africa. They were escaping persecution from Idi Amin's regime in Uganda, who scapegoated them as the reason for his country's woes. An estimated 150,000 to 200,000 East African Indians arrived in the UK during this period.

European Union Countries

In 1992 European Union (EU) countries agreed to the notion of free movement to any member state, bringing immigrants to the UK. However, the UK felt the full effects of migration after the EU's expansion in 2004 to cater for countries in Central and Eastern Europe. In contrast to many wealthier countries in the economic bloc, the UK wanted a larger workforce, so it placed no immediate restrictions on EU workers.

Between 2013 and 2016 (before Brexit and the UK voted to leave the EU), there were more EU immigrants than from non-EU countries. The Brexit vote, however, led to an exodus of EU workers. Now, workers outside of the EU constitute the majority of immigrants once more.

UK Immigration Rules

We have now examined some immigration policies of the UK government in the latter half of the 20^th and the early 21^st centuries. To understand the current policy, let's dive into the most recent of these and examine them in more detail.

UK Immigration Facts

Let's look at some key facts about immigration and the UK.

Immigrants and Racism

The Notting Hill riots in 1958 are a perfect example of how immigration has caused friction in the UK. This area of London was home to a Caribbean community who lived alongside impoverished white males, many of whom leant to the far-right and belonged to the Union Movement or White Defence League. They attacked Caribbean people and their property in late August and early September. These attacks were met with terror and dismay at the lack of police reaction.

Issues of this nature highlighted the multicultural Britain that was developing and mirrored the systemic racism of the United States. A year later, an Antiguan man named Kelso Cochrane was killed in Notting Hill. This ultimately led to the first street Notting Hill Carnival in 1964, a celebration of Caribbean culture and defiance.

Fig. 3 - Notting Hill Carnival

UK Migration

The UK has consistently been in the top ten countries in the world for emigration. The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford³ studied the immigration and emigration figures between 1991 and 2019. They found that immigration significantly increased thanks to the expansion of the EU. The economic crises in Southern Europe contributed to a peak in net migration in 2015 (331,000) but fell after the Brexit vote. The study projected that by the end of 2019, the net migration would be 270,000. It also stated that work or studies were the most common reasons for migration into the UK.

UK Immigration: Statistics

According to the same study³, the total number of UK immigrants has been on the rise gradually and numbered 677,000 in 2019. In 2012, it was 512,000. Between 2014 and 2018, there were fluctuations between 600,000 and 670,000. As mentioned earlier, the exodus of EU workers after Brexit has changed the face of who is arriving. Now the majority of immigrants are from non-EU countries.

UK Immigration: Covid

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the flow of immigration, in the UK and around the world. By June 2020, three months after the announcement of the first lockdown was announced, both EU and non-EU immigration into the UK were down almost 98%⁴. This pattern continued for much of the year, and there was a vast reduction in work and study visas. China, in particular, which is responsible for many student visas, imposed harsh measures against travel to curb the spread of the virus. 2021 brought a level of recovery, and although it was 36% higher than 2020, it was still 59% lower than 2019. Ultimately, immigration is still feeling the effects of the pandemic⁵.

UK Immigration Minister

Kevin Foster was appointed Minister for Immigration in 2019. The UK government claims he has prioritised the following issues in terms of immigration policy. These provide a window into the future of UK immigration.

1. Simplifying the points-based system and immigration rules.
2. Clarifying the visa system.
3. Focusing on refugee and asylum crises.
4. Bringing net migration down.
5. Addressing the Windrush scandal.