The Labour party’s struggle with immigration is harming our ability to win key votes including last week’s EU referendum. Despite David Cameron’s governments reaching record high levels of net migration, Labour is blamed for opening the door. Our problem is that if we fail to win public trust we risk losing future elections. The good news is that there is a way forward.
The United Kingdom’s immigration laws are in disarray. The current length of laws and secondary rules runs to over 2,000 pages – and that’s before you include case law or European laws. The rules change frequently and as often as every day. Yet as immigration ministers launch new gimmicks to reassure the public through supportive headlines, things are moving so quickly that there is too little thought to the deepening problems with the immigration system as an increasingly broken system.
I learned much of this first-hand as an immigrant. Originally from the United States, I came to Britain in 2001 and earned British citizenship in 2011. Along the way I found myself uneasily face-to-face with a system that few understood where what the public believes can be very different from how it happens.
An early warning sign came in the form of the UK’s citizenship test – often referred to as the test few British citizens can pass. The test was intended as a way to ensure, alongside other measures, that new residents understood and accepted British values and ways of life. But it has developed into a half-baked bad pub quiz designed to trick than treat.
When I sat my test, it became clear that many of the ‘correct’ answers to questions were factually untrue. I was asked questions about the number of parliamentary constituencies, but their number had changed and the test not updated. In 2013, I produced a report that found that it was possible to pass a test of nothing but untrue ‘correct’ answers. Surprisingly, no one else had discovered how flawed the exercise had become.
The test has been updated since – and ballooned to about 3,000 facts over nearly 200 pages. Facts to memorise include knowing the height of the London Eye in feet (443’), the fifth wife of Henry VIII (Catherine Howard) and the name of Britain’s first curry house (Hindoostane Coffee House).
It became clear to me there were two problems. First, successive governments have been too desperate to win over the public. Policy announcements have come so quickly I found not all had time for an accompanying press release. This has had the consequences of too little thought given to how different policies are to work together creating a system that few – even among High Commissioners and border agents – understood leading to serious errors that impacted negatively on people’s lives.
The second problem is that immigrants have nowhere been consulted. I am not recommending that immigrants should have the only say or hold a veto over new plans. But if the aim is to control borders better and improve efforts to integrate new members into our political community, this cannot be done any longer without engaging with those coming to our country and wanting to contribute.
These first-hand experiences and expertise teaching immigration law led me to write a new book, ‘Becoming British’. Some argue that the immigration system is a mess that can be fixed – and that Labour policies can only make it worse rather than better. They are wrong – and my book is an attempt to show how the system can be improved without sacrificing our Labour principles.
Immigration has proven to be a difficult issue for our party. We do not talk enough about it – or what our policies are with voters outside the party – and this has fostered a climate of general public mistrust. This has stung us in votes like the EU referendum where immigration was again a leading issue of concern.
But it need not always be like this. There is a way forward. We can develop a more robust, updated immigration policy that wins the public back to our side – without trying to be more reckless or reactionary than the Tories. There is another way, a path forward spelled out in ‘Becoming British’. Our party has waited too long for such a vision. My hope is that Labour need not wait any longer. The only questions now are will it listen and take note?
———————————
Thom Brooks is professor of law and government at Durham University’s law school. He is the author of Becoming British (Biteback, 2016) and tweets @thom_brooks.
———————————