UK government to tighten immigration rules amid voter anger over ‘failed experiment in open borders’

LONDON (AP) - British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will on Monday unveil plans to tighten immigration rules, confronting an issue that has bedeviled successive governments and fueled the rise of a new anti-immigrant party that could threaten the country's political establishment.

Starmer, whose center-left Labour Party won a landslide victory last July, is facing pressure from voters who are increasingly frustrated by high levels of immigration that many believe have strained public services and inflamed ethnic tensions in some parts of the country.

Starmer is pledging to end what his office described as "Britain's failed experiment in open borders,'' less than two weeks after Reform UK rode the immigration issue to victories in local elections. Labour and the center-right Conservatives, long the dominant parties in British politics, both saw their support crater in the contests for local government councils and mayors.

"Every area of the immigration system, including work, family and study, will be tightened up so we have more control. Enforcement will be tougher than ever and migration numbers will fall,'' Starmer said in excerpts of a speech to be delivered on Monday. "We will create a system that is controlled, selective and fair.''

Immigration has been a potent issue in Britain since 2004, when the European Union expanded to Eastern Europe. While most EU countries restricted immigration from the new member states for a period of years, the U.K. immediately opened its labor market, attracting a flood of new arrivals.

By 2010, then-Prime Minister David Cameron pledged to cut annual net immigration to less than 100,000, a target four Conservative governments failed to meet. In 2016, anger over the government's inability to control immigration from the EU triggered a referendum in which Britain voted to leave the bloc.

But Brexit did nothing to reduce the number of people entering the country on visas for work, education and family reunification.

In recent years, concerns that the government has lost control of Britain's borders have been fueled by the sight of thousands of migrants entering the U.K. illegally on leaky, inflatable boats operated by people smugglers. Some 37,000 people crossed the English Channel on small boats last year, down from 45,755 in 2022, government statistics show.

Reform’s performance in the local elections was "because people are raging, furious, about the levels of both legal and illegal immigration," Deputy Party Leader Richard Tice told Sky News.

Annual net migration - the number of people entering the U.K. minus those who left - stood at 728,000 in the year to June 2024. While that figure was down 20% from the year to June 2023, according to the Office for National Statistics, it was still more than seven times the target set by the Conservatives in 2010.

Starmer's government doesn't plan to set a new target, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, who is in charge of immigration, said on Sunday.

"We're not going to take that really failed approach, because I think what we need to do is rebuild credibility and trust in the whole system," she said in an interview with Sky News.

Instead, she said, the government will focus on policies such as restricting visas for lower-skilled workers. The new rules will mean 50,000 fewer visas for these workers next year, Cooper said.

Chris Philp, Cooper's Conservative counterpart, said his party will support such proposals but they don't go far enough.

"Tomorrow we intend to push to a vote in Parliament a measure that would have an annual cap on migration voted for and set by Parliament to restore proper democratic accountability, because those numbers were far, far too high," he said.