The Anglosphere Shifts Towards Immigration Restriction

During the past couple of weeks, there has been a striking move towards lowering immigration levels in England and Australia, with New Zealand’s government hinting that it may follow suit.

England: Bipartisan Consensus on Immigration Restriction in the Green and Pleasant Land? 

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has for some time been under considerable pressure from his own Tory party to act on rising levels of legal and illegal immigration. On the heels of an announcement from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) that net migration (immigration minus departures) had reached a startling 745,000 in 2022, Sunak enacted a package of tough measures to cut immigration levels going forward.

This includes raising the minimum earning threshold for foreign workers from £26,200 to £38,700, prohibiting foreign healthcare workers from bringing dependants, increasing the minimum income required for those wanting to sponsor family members from abroad, and working to prevent abuse of the graduate visa program.

All told, these restrictions will lower immigration by an estimated 300,000, which British Home Secretary James Cleverly boasted will constitute “the biggest ever reduction in net migration” in the history of the country. While this would still put immigration at roughly 445,000 next year, these strong measures indicate that the Sunak government is responding to public opinion and internal party pressure by lowering immigration going forward.

Interestingly, Labour Leader Keir Starmer is trying to flank the Tories on this issue by positioning himself as the real immigration restriction candidate! In a speech in Buckinghamshire, Starmer attacked the Tory party for betraying Brexit voters by opening England’s borders to cheap overseas labour:

“Yes, Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was. But it was also a vote for that idea we need to renew, that hard work should be rewarded with a wage people can live on. And for the Tories, that’s the rub.

Seven years they’ve had to make Brexit work. But every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are.”

Starmer went on to proclaim that Labour is the party to vote for “if you want lower migration and higher wages”. England is now in the rather unexpected situation of the major parties on both Left and Right vying to outdo each other on how few immigrants they will accept. Of particular interest is Starmer’s framing of the issue, directly linking large-scale immigration to the undercutting of British wages. Perhaps it was only a matter of time before mainstream figures on the Left rediscovered the long, but recently forgotten, history of leftist, union-orchestrated opposition to cheap foreign labour.

Australia: Our Desert Island is Full! 

A similar role reversal is occurring in Australia, where a left-wing government has announced its intention to cut the country’s immigration rate in half.

After the pandemic, Australia’s immigration levels surged to a record 510,000 annually, putting immense pressure on the housing market, with nationwide rents spiking 7.6% in a single year. There are currently 650,000 international students in the country, with 150,000 on a second visa. Many of those on their second visa are pursuing a lower level of study than on their first visa – their real intention being to remain in the country to work.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Leader of the Labour Party, recently declared that “the system is broken” and promised to bring immigration back to a “sustainable level”. A slate of new measures includes toughening English requirements for international students,  requiring that international students applying for a second visa prove that it will help their academic or career aspirations, and lifting the Temporary Skilled Migration income threshold to $70,000 (to be henceforth indexed annually).

The Labour government promises that, if these measures do not succeed in lowering immigration from 510,000/year to 250,000/year, it will put even stricter restrictions in place. This is still high, and it remains to be seen whether the 62% of Australians who want lower immigration levels will be satisfied, but it’s more evidence that governments on the Left can be just as sensitive as those on the Right to public backlash against unsustainable levels of immigration.

New Zealand: Have the Kiwis had Enough? 

Tiny New Zealand (pop: 5.1 million) has hit an all-time net migration record of 128,900/year. This means that roughly 1/50 country’s inhabitants are immigrants who arrived in the past year alone! New Zealand’s largest source of immigrants is India, followed by Philippines and China. Since the Law of Supply and Demand also applies in the Land Down Under, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) has warned of a coming interest rate hike, as the wave of immigration pushes up rent and house prices.

Christopher Luxon, New Zealand’s new right-wing Prime Minister, recently said this rate “doesn’t feel sustainable for New Zealand at all”. While no new measures have so far been introduced to lower numbers, Prime Minister Luxon’s right-wing coalition government has shown itself to be more than willing to broach other polarizing issues. The country has recently been embroiled in a culture war, with Luxon’s government rolling back the use of the Maori language in government, and proposing to abolish affirmative action quotas for Maori in medical school admissions.

It remains to be seen whether the new conservative government will add immigration restriction to the country’s growing list of divisive culture war battles. But in a nation made up of just a couple small islands, the current rate of arrivals cannot go on much longer without becoming a major topic of debate.

Even Canada?

Canada has the the highest immigration rate of any Anglosphere country, with our population growing by more than one million in 2022 alone due to high numbers of permanent (427,180) and non-permanent (an estimated 607,782) immigrants. While the fiercely pro-immigration Trudeau government continues to pledge to raise the number of permanent residents admitted to 500,000 annually, it has recently taken some action to crack down on one significant stream of non-permanent residents: foreign students.

The number of international students present in the country ballooned to 807,26o at the end of 2022, and has become the subject of increased media spotlight. Stories have emerged of international students abusing the Canadian food bank system, or enrolling in “diploma mill” colleges in strip malls, which churn out dubious diplomas to students whose real intention is to work in Canada and eventually gain permanent residence.

The government has responded with a raft of restrictions, including doubling the financial requirement. In the first change to this requirement since the early 2000s, applicants will now have to show that they have $20,635 in the bank, up from $10,000. The amount of time that foreign students are allowed to work, raised to 40 hours a week during the pandemic, has been lowered back to 20 hours a week. Immigration Minister Marc Miller has given universities, and the provinces and territories that regulate them, an ultimatum to enact reforms. If they do not do so by September, the government is prepared to “significantly” limit the number of student visas issued going forward.

Unlike England and Australia, however, the Canadian government has not changed its overall disposition towards large-scale immigration. Today, the Globe and Mail announced that Immigration Minister Marc Miller intends to give amnesty to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants living in Canada. He plans to begin this process in the spring, testing the waters of public opinion by starting out with an initial amnesty offered only to illegal immigrants working in the construction sector.

The recent shift towards immigration restriction across the Anglosphere, however, shows that its governments are sensitive to significant public backlash against unsustainable levels of immigration. As opposition to large-scale immigration continues to rise, with a recent poll showing that 67% of Canadians (including 62% of immigrants themselves) think levels are too high, the Canadian government will find it harder and harder to avoid the trend towards immigration restriction spreading across the English-speaking world.