Labour has betrayed its promise to stop the boats
Labour made extravagant, and in this case justified, attacks on the Tory record – a useful way of signalling it had become a normal party again after Corbyn – while, as in so many other areas, merely replicating that Tory failure, at least in relation to ' smashing the gangs '.
Moreover, despite having so long to prepare for Government it seems to have done no original thinking on either legal or illegal immigration. That said, Labour's record on legal migration has been better than I expected, and the immigration white paper remains an extraordinary volte face for a pro-immigration party, eloquently making the case that mass migration sceptics have been making for 20 years.
The biggest story of the past year has been the almost halving of net immigration to 431,000 in 2024, almost entirely due to measures taken by Rishi Sunak's government. But the white paper measures will build on Sunak in three important respects: the complete ban on social care visas, extending the qualifying period for indefinite leave to remain from five to 10 years, and raising the skill threshold for skilled work visas that will make it much harder to bring in people for middle-skill jobs.
The biggest disappointment was cutting the two year post-study work option for international students to 18 months rather than abolishing it or restricting it only to students at elite universities, especially as international students at lower status universities turn out not to contribute much to the cross-subsidy of domestic students.
Nevertheless, Labour has probably achieved three, and maybe four, of its five pledges on immigration, a better record than most areas, though mainly thanks to Sunak government decisions. The pledges were: bring down net immigration, reduce reliance on overseas workers, tackle smuggling gangs, clear the asylum backlog and accelerate the removal of people without legal status in the UK.
The asylum backlog initially went up after July 2024 when Sunak's Illegal Immigration Act was repealed but is now probably a little below the inherited level. Returns have continued the gentle upward trend that began in 2021 but only 3 per cent of small boat crossers have been returned and most of those are accounted for by the deal with Albania signed by the previous Government.
There are some less promising signs too. The recent industrial strategy paper talked ominously about using the soon-to-be-revised temporary shortage list to plug skill gaps. There is the failure, too, to clamp down on the nearly half of food delivery drivers who the Home Office reckons are working illegally. And we should be reading headlines about training boot camps in the many skill shortage areas, akin to the way the HGV crisis was dealt with after the pandemic.
But the great failure of Labour's first year was to repeal the Rwanda off-shoring plan with nothing to replace it. For all the talk of reset with the EU it is an astonishing breakdown of international co-operation that no agreement has been reached to automatically return all Channel crossers – now at a record 19,000 for the first six months of the year and more than 170,000 since 2018 – either to France or a coalition of European countries.
A hard stop consistently applied to all crossers for just a few days would end the flow immediately; why pay $5,000 to a people smuggler to bring you to the UK if you are automatically returned? This is clearly in France's interests too as at least a proportion of those queuing at Calais would not arrive in France at all if the UK option was removed.
On top of a guarantee that all those accepted back by France after the hard stop, surely no more than a couple of thousand, would be matched by someone taken from the French asylum lists, the UK would have to offer an extra sweetener to enable French politicians to sell the idea. Simple enough?
Various plans for such a Rwanda-style off-shoring, but within Europe, have been floating around for months, some involving France others involving a broader coalition of the willing. A plan is finally expected in the next week or so, but it's unlikely to involve the kind of hard stop that is necessary.
And why is there no plan to stop using asylum hotels within 12 months, rather than at the end of the Parliament (also unlikely to be achieved). Why not a new version of Homes for Ukraine or calling on diaspora groups to house their co-nationals?
More generally Labour is zig-zagging on immigration, as on so much else, between a new toughness, in response to the Reform surge, and its old liberal instincts. The latter is symbolised by Keir Starmer's extraordinary expression of regret at his 'island of strangers' comment. Expect more zig-zagging ahead.
This week The Telegraph is running a daily series on a Year of Labour, marking the anniversary of Starmer's election win on July 4. Come back at noon tomorrow to read Aaron Bastani on why Starmer isn't ready for the return of the Corbynistas
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The Guardian
30 minutes ago
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Glastonbury chanters or the Southport hate-tweeter – throw the book at one, you must throw it at them all
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If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. This article's URL was amended shortly after publication to remove draft text that was included in error.
The National
an hour ago
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The Independent
an hour ago
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At a federal immigration building in downtown Los Angeles guarded by U.S. Marines, daughters, sons, aunts, nieces and others make their way to an underground garage and line up at a door with a buzzer at the end of a dirty, dark stairwell. It's here where families, some with lawyers, come to find their loved ones after they've been arrested by federal immigration agents. For immigrants without legal status who are detained in this part of Southern California, their first stop is the Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in the basement of the federal building. Officers verify their identity and obtain their biometrics before transferring them to detention facilities. Upstairs, immigrants line up around the block for other services, including for green cards and asylum applications. On a recent day, dozens of people arrived with medication, clothing and hope of seeing their loved one, if only briefly. 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Around 8 a.m., when attorney visits begin, a few lawyers buzz the basement door called 'B-18" as families wait anxiously outside to hear any inkling of information. 9 a.m. Christina Jimenez and her cousin arrive to check if her 61-year-old stepfather is inside. Her family had prepared for the possibility of this happening to the day laborer who would wait to be hired outside a Home Depot in the LA suburb of Hawthorne. They began sharing locations when the raids intensified. They told him that if he were detained, he should stay silent and follow instructions. Jimenez had urged him to stop working, or at least avoid certain areas as raids increased. But he was stubborn and 'always hustled.' 'He could be sick and he's still trying to make it out to work,' Jimenez said. After learning of his arrest, she looked him up online on the ICE Detainee Locator but couldn't find him. She tried calling ICE to no avail. Two days later, her phone pinged with his location downtown. 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Velez's family believes she was targeted for looking Hispanic and standing near a tamale stand. Rosas has her sister's passport and U.S. birth certificate, but learns she is not there. They find her next door in a federal detention center. She was accused of obstructing immigration officers, which the family denies, but is released the next day. 11:40 a.m. About 20 people are now outside. Some have found cardboard to sit on after waiting hours. One family comforts a woman who is crying softly in the stairwell. Then the door opens, and a group of lawyers emerge. Families rush to ask if the attorneys could help them. Kim Carver, a lawyer with the Trans Latino Coalition, says she planned to see her client, a transgender Honduran woman, but she was transferred to a facility in Texas at 6:30 that morning. Carver accompanied her less than a week ago for an immigration interview and the asylum officer told her she had a credible case. Then ICE officers walked in and detained her. 'Since then, it's been just a chase trying to find her,' she says. 12:28 p.m. As more people arrive, the group begins sharing information. One person explains the all-important 'A-number,' the registration number given to every detainee, which is needed before an attorney can help. They exchange tips like how to add money to an account for phone calls. One woman says $20 lasted three or four calls for her. Mayra Segura is looking for her uncle after his frozen popsicle cart was abandoned in the middle of the sidewalk in Culver City. 'They couldn't find him in the system,' she says. 12:52 p.m. Another lawyer, visibly frustrated, comes out the door. She's carrying bags of clothes, snacks, Tylenol, and water that she says she wasn't allowed to give to her client, even though he says he had been given only one water bottle over the past two days. The line stretches outside the stairwell into the sun. A man leaves and returns with water for everyone. Nearly an hour after family visitations are supposed to begin, people are finally allowed in. 2:12 p.m. Still wearing hospital scrubs from work, Jasmin Camacho Picazo comes to see her husband again. She brought a sweater because he had told her he was cold, and his back injury was aggravated from sleeping on the ground. 'He mentioned this morning (that) people were drinking from the restroom toilet water,' Picazo says. On her phone, she shows footage of his car left on the side of the road after his arrest. The window was smashed and the keys were still in the ignition. 'I can't stop crying," Picazo says. Her son keeps asking: "Is Papa going to pick me up from school?' 2:21 p.m. More than five hours after Jimenez and her cousin arrive, they see her stepfather. 'He was sad and he's scared," says Jimenez afterwards. 'We tried to reassure him as much as possible.' She wrote down her phone number, which he had not memorized, so he could call her. 2:57 p.m. More people arrive as others are let in. Yadira Almadaz comes out crying after seeing her niece's boyfriend for only five minutes. She says he was in the same clothes he was wearing when he was detained a week ago at an asylum appointment in the city of Tustin. He told her he'd only been given cookies and chips to eat each day. 'It breaks my heart seeing a young man cry because he's hungry and thirsty,' she says. 3:56 p.m. Four minutes before visitation time is supposed to end, an ICE officer opens the door and announces it's over. One woman snaps at him in frustration. The officer tells her he would get in trouble if he helped her past 4 p.m. More than 20 people are still waiting in line. Some trickle out. Others linger, staring at the door in disbelief.
