The United Kingdom’s Conservative Party suffered its worst defeat in almost 200 years in its July 4, 2024, elections. Two of the key issues in that race were the cost of living and immigration levels that were too high.
The current Labour Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, says the government in which she serves “inherited a broken immigration and asylum system that the previous government left in chaos.”
In a speech on Nov. 28, the new prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, said that nearly a million immigrants came to Britain in the year ending on June 2023 — “four times the migration levels compared with 2019.” This wasn’t just bad luck or taking your eye off the ball. It was deliberate. The previous administration had liberalized British immigration policies and turned “Britain into a one-nation experiment in open borders.”
In May, Starmer published a white paper, “Restoring Control over the Immigration System,” that outlined his administration’s immigration plan going forward. In addition to measures to reduce immigration to the UK, it provides that “if people want to come to Britain to start a new life, they must contribute, learn our language and integrate.” It also provides that if “employers want to bring workers from overseas, then they must also invest in the skills of workers already in Britain.”
Some of the measures in that plan would be useful here in the U.S., too.
Our previous administration also had an open borders policy of sorts. Several measures from the UK plan would weaken the job magnet that attracts illegal immigration to the U.S.
For example, their plan limits unnecessary foreign employees. This encourages employers to hire UK workers if they are available and provide them with training if it is needed. The UK should not be dependent on foreign workers.
This also applies to American employers, who should be able to hire foreign workers when they can’t find U.S. citizens to fill their vacancies. But American jobs should be filled by American workers to the extent that it is feasible. Making jobs in the U.S. widely available to foreign workers makes it easier for unauthorized immigrants to find work here, which in turn encourages illegal immigration.
Another smart UK policy pertains to resettlement. Assistance with resettlement for newly arrived immigrants with lawful status has focused primarily on refugees and aliens who are granted asylum. The government should provide resettlement assistance across the entire immigration system, not just for refugees and asylees. Among other things, this means helping them learn English.
The U.S. should make assistance in learning the English language available to newly arrived immigrants with lawful status here, too. Among other benefits, it would make them available to fill job vacancies that require the ability to speak English. And filling more jobs with American workers and immigrants who have lawful status would make fewer jobs available to aliens who come here illegally.
Another example: The UK plan supports the Employment Rights Bill, which, among other things, would establish a Fair Work Agency to “co-ordinate stronger action against employers who are exploiting” foreign workers or flouting employment laws. Such an agency could coordinate the efforts of government agencies in the U.S. that enforce our employment laws.
In the U.S., ICE enforces compliance with a provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act that makes it unlawful for employers to knowingly employ an alien who is not authorized to work in the U.S. And the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division fines employers for violations of overtime and minimum wage requirements in the Fair Labor Standards Act.
These agencies should be working together. Employers are less likely to hire unauthorized foreign workers if they know they might be fined for hiring them or for paying them less than American workers would expect.
Another idea the U.S. could learn from is the UK’s eVisas, which provide immigration officers with access to a digital record of foreign visitors’ identity and immigration status. These eVisas make it possible to determine such things as whether an individual alien is inside or outside the UK at any given time and whether they have overstayed their visa.
A modified version of the UK’s eVisa would provide ICE with additional information for its data mining operations, and with proper software and portable biometric devices, ICE officers would be able to identify aliens in the field who have been issued eVisas and determine whether or not they should be arrested.
These measures in the UK are expected to reduce net migration to about 240,000 from 2028 moving forward, but the Conservative’s party leader, Kemi Badenoch, says that doesn’t go far enough. The UK may have to resort to more draconian measures, such as the ones proposed by former Labor Home Secretary Lord David Blunkett. He thinks it may be necessary to suspend “elements of the European Convention on Human Rights and the UN Refugee Convention.”
The United States may have to do that too. Our immigration court’s 3,446,855 case backlog makes it impossible to get a hearing for asylum seekers or to put deportable aliens in removal proceedings unless they are put ahead of the three-and-a-half million aliens who are in line for a hearing already.
Nolan Rappaport was detailed to the House Judiciary Committee as an Executive Branch Immigration Law Expert for three years. He subsequently served as an immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims for four years. Prior to working on the Judiciary Committee, he wrote decisions for the Board of Immigration Appeals for 20 years.
