The bosses’ media, and Labour, the Tories and Reform UK would have us believe that Britain is under siege, constructing a narrative of national emergency from the spectacle of small boats in the Channel and inflated immigration figures. This relentless campaign whips up a social frenzy with a clear objective: to divide our class by scapegoating migrants for crises engineered by the ruling elite.
Migrants are systematically blamed for overwhelming public services, depressing wages and causing housing shortages. Yet a sober look at the facts reveals a different story entirely. The so-called ‘migration problem’ is a political fabrication, a weapon of mass distraction designed to pit worker against worker while the real enemies—the bosses and their state—escape scrutiny for their systemic failures.
Migrants are paraded as a drain on the economy, yet the reality is that most are net contributors. Working-age migrants pay taxes and National Insurance, and those on visas are required to pay the Immigration Health Surcharge – currently over £1,000 per year – to access the NHS, on top of their tax contributions. Furthermore, a significant number are subject to ‘No Recourse to Public Funds’ (NRPF) conditions, legally barring them from claiming most state benefits.
They are also vilified as a criminal threat, a myth perpetuated by a media machine that eagerly publicises a perpetrator’s migrant status to tar entire communities, while often reporting similar crimes committed by white Britons as isolated incidents, devoid of the same inflammatory labels. Under pressure the police have also started to give the ethnicity and status of suspects, a practice up to now deemed to influence juries.
Furthermore, they are accused of creating the housing crisis, a blatant distortion that obscures the true cause: decades of policy, initiated under Thatcher, that decimated council housing stock and fuelled the treatment of homes as speculative assets for the wealthy. By blaming the migrant for the lack of social housing, the system absolves itself for its deliberate failure to build enough affordable homes.
This manufactured crisis is not about numbers or borders; it is a calculated political strategy to ensure that the anger over crumbling services, precarious work, and unaffordable homes is directed horizontally at the most vulnerable, rather than vertically at the capitalist class whose profiteering is the true source of our deprivation.
Setting the record straight
Let’s be clear on the scale of immigration. During 2023, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimated 1.2 million long-term immigrants arrived in the UK (ONS, 2024). This high figure is often presented in isolation to create a sense of crisis. A comparative look at Europe reveals a different story.
While the UK’s net migration is high, it is part of a broader European pattern. For instance, in 2022 Germany received over 1.2 million asylum applications from Ukrainians alone, in addition to other migrants (Eurostat, 2023). This demonstrates that large-scale movement is a manageable feature of a globalised world, not a unique ‘invasion’ of Britain. The political choice to frame it as such is a deliberate strategy to inflame public opinion.
Furthermore, the UK’s focus on ‘small boats’ distracts from the reality of asylum in Europe. The number of people arriving by this route was 29,437 (Home Office, 2024). For context, in the same period, the UK received 67,337 asylum applications in total (Home Office, 2024).
This pales in comparison to other EU nations. In 2023 Germany received over 351,000 asylum applications, France received 167,000, and even smaller countries like Austria (56,000) and the Netherlands (55,000) received similar numbers to the UK, despite having far smaller population (EUAA, 2024).
This comparative analysis exposes the central fallacy: the UK’s asylum numbers are modest by European standards. The crisis is not one of capacity, but of political will and the deliberate underfunding and sabotage of the asylum system. The real issue is not the number of arrivals, but the political choice to present a manageable situation as an unmanageable emergency to divide the working class.
Migration is Not New; The ‘Problem’ Is
Human migration is a historical constant. From the movements of people within the Roman Empire to the Huguenots fleeing persecution in France, our islands have always been shaped by movement. The British Empire itself was a vast engine of migration, drawing wealth and labour from its colonies and exporting settlers, administrators and armed forces.
Today’s migrants are following the same logic that has always driven people: the search for safety and a better life.
They flee wars in which the UK is a leading arms supplier, having licensed over £11 billion worth of arms to the Middle East and North Africa since 2008 (Campaign Against Arms Trade, 2023). They escape poverty exacerbated by a global economic system Britain helped design and from which its ruling class profits. They are displaced by climate devastation, to which the historic emissions of the industrialised West are the primary contributor (Carbon Brief, 2021). To come to Britain is often to seek refuge from crises that British imperialism helped create.
In the recent Jacobin autumn issue, Daniel Finn has described Britain’s particular predicament vis-a-vis migration in an article titled ‘Britain’s Made-Up Migrant Crisis’. Charting Britain’s modern immigration trajectory, he identifies three waves.
- The long-term movement from former British colonies that began in the immediate postwar decades at a time when Britain’s nationality law gave new arrivals from the Commonwealth member states such as Jamaica and Pakistan the right to live, work and vote as soon as they reached the country.
- The Eastern Europeans who came to live and work, and eventually settle, in Britain after joining the EU in 2004. As a result, the immigrant population rose from 5.3 to 9.4 million between 2005 and 2017.
- The refugees from North Africa and the Middle East.
Finn uses these waves to describe the formation of a multiracial British society, one that was supposedly comfortable with ethnic and racial diversity. Why immigration has been a hot political topic in the new century is something he attributes to two factors: first, the new wave of immigration from within the EU and second, the rise of political Islamophobia after 9/11 and the war on terror in which Britain was an active participant.
While these are two distinct developments, he identifies Tony Blair’s foreign policy as the common link between them. Having alienated France and Germany through his alliance with George W. Bush, Blair opened Britain’s doors to migrants from Eastern European countries in an attempt to cosy up to them.
There were 3.2 million EU migrants living in Britain by 2015, with more than a million from Poland and Romania alone. Eastern Europeans were more likely to settle rural areas and smaller towns, whereas Black and Asian immigrants tended to stay in the bigger towns and cities. Finn cites research on native public perception of immigrants that hinged on a graded hierarchy – migrants who were white, English-speaking and from European and Christian countries were the most preferred, while the least preferred were non-white ones from non-European or Muslim countries.
French immigrants were even more preferable than Poles Yet Poland as a country of origin was far more favourable than Nigeria or Pakistan, even though both had English as their official language. Attitudes towards migration from Romania and Pakistan were identical. Finn makes the case that Brexit saw immigrants being scapegoated for problems that were actually caused by spending cuts at a time when a class-based alternative to austerity was absent and trade union membership was in long-term decline (Britain’s Made-Up Migrant Crisis, 2025).
The ultimate result of this kind of scapegoating is a deflection from the real issues of the day and a division and weakening of the working class. It helps ensure that public anger is misdirected away from bourgeois politicians arming a genocide in the Middle East and towards the most vulnerable.
The Manufactured Crisis: A Political Choice
It is crucial to understand that migrants and refugees do not arrive as a ‘problem’. They are made into one through political, social, and legal mediation. This is a conscious strategy on part of the ruling class.
The ban on work for asylum seekers in one example. It is a political and legal decision, under the Immigration Rules, that asylum seekers are generally prohibited from working for the first 12 months while their claims are processed (gov.uk, 2024). This rule was introduced in 2003 during a wave of Islamophobic reaction, leaving asylum seekers today receiving just £49 a week to live on, or a ridiculous £9 if they are in a hotel.
This forces them into destitution, making them easy prey for criminal gangs, which is then pointed to as a ‘burden on the taxpayer’ or a ‘threat to our communities’. This is not an economic necessity; it is a political choice to make asylum seekers visible as a ‘drain’ rather than allowing them to be seen as fellow workers and contributors.
Another stark example is the political choice to fund public services by increasing costs on employment, rather than wealth. The Labour government’s decision to increase employer National Insurance contributions to 15% from 2025 is presented as a fiscal necessity. This is a political choice not to raise equivalent revenue by taxing extreme wealth or the soaring super-profits of corporations, particularly in the energy and finance sectors.
The predictable result will be that bosses cite increased payroll costs as a justification for restructuring and layoffs, like the 100,000 workers who were made redundant in the last quarter of 2022 following the Tories’ NI hike (ONS). These job losses are then cynically used to argue that ‘British workers’ are losing out to migrants.
This is a lie. The corporate class that lobbies for cheap labour visas to suppress wages is the same one that sacks workers to protect profit margins. The enemy is not the migrant worker; the enemy is the boss in the boardroom who uses any excuse—be it a tax change or a willing migrant—to drive down our conditions and increase their profits.
Mahmood’s Reforms: A Managed System of Institutionalised Racism
Into this fray steps Labour’s Shabana Mahmood, continuing a troubling political tradition where women of colour are deployed to administer and legitimise systems of state racism. Like her Conservative predecessors – Suella Braverman, who championed the Rwanda deportation scheme, and Priti Patel, who oversaw the Nationality and Borders Bill – Mahmood now serves as a female agent of Britain’s imperialist border regime.
Her political identity as a British-Pakistani woman is strategically instrumentalised to lend an illusion of progressive legitimacy to reforms that perpetuate institutional racism, creating a dangerous façade of inclusivity while maintaining brutal systems of exclusion. Mahmood shamelessly quoted racist tweets against her to deflect from the racism that her new rules will generate.
The Labour plan centres on a new Border Security Command with enhanced powers to ‘smash the criminal smuggling gangs’ framing migration through a security lens that criminalises desperate people. This security-focused approach, coupled with reforms to the Points-Based System that maintain prohibitive salary thresholds, reveals a fundamental commitment to immigration restriction rather than liberation.
A critical element of this managed racism is Labour’s adoption of the Conservatives’ brutal income requirements. Labour has notably failed to pledge any reversal of the Tories’ planned increase of the minimum income requirement for family visas to £38,700. For millions of low-wage workers – particularly in social care where the median salary is £21,000 (Skills for Care, 2023) and the workforce is predominantly racialised migrants – this creates an impossible double barrier.
In addition the Labour Home Secretary has quadrupled the wait for Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) from five to 20 years, as workers must renew temporary visas every 30 months, accruing thousands of pounds in fees each time, without ever qualifying for permanent status. This creates a permanent underclass of temporary labour, with an estimated 300,000 care workers alone condemned to this state of perpetual precarity.
The systemic racism of this approach is further evidenced by the financial barriers embedded throughout the immigration system. The vast majority of migrants face No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) conditions, barring access to essential benefits despite their tax contributions.
The mandatory Immigration Health Surcharge of £1,035 annually forces migrants to pay twice for NHS access, while the extortionate citizenship fee of £1,580 makes British nationality financially inaccessible to many. Compared to Germany’s €255 or France’s €55 naturalisation fees, the UK’s total cost exceeds £10,000 per person. This constitutes a deliberate system of financial exclusion that disproportionately impacts migrants from poorer, predominantly non-white nations.
Mahmood, who is part of the Blue Labour wing that promotes traditionally Tory values of ‘family, faith and flag’, also wants to tinker with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and Modern Slavery Act, to reduce refugees’ right to bring their families to the UK and prevent migrants from introducing new evidence on appeal.
Half of all asylum seekers, with poor understanding of English language and UK law and limited or no access to asylum lawyers, fail their initial interview. But half of those who appeal win their cases, once lawyers have compiled their evidence put their case into a legally presentable form. Mahmood wants to prevent this access to justice.
In a final kick in the teeth Labour has drawn up a list, to be revised constantly, of countries that are deemed safe for refugees to return to. Current countries that fit this brief include Angola, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, whose people are still reeling from 30 years of civil wars. The slightest, flimsiest lift in a country’s prospects could mean ‘settled’ refugees being deported.
In conclusion, Mahmood’s reforms represent the insidious face of modern institutional racism. By maintaining exorbitant fees and making settlement more difficult, these policies ensure a steady supply of exploitable labour while maintaining the fiction of progressive politics. This is not liberation but sophisticated oppression, using identity politics to conceal the creation of a racially stratified immigration system that serves the interests of capital while dividing the working class.
For a Workers’ Solution
The workers’ movement, including Your Party, must break decisively with the nationalist consensus and offer a clear, class-based alternative. We demand:
1. No to Bosses’ Immigration Controls: For the right to asylum and the freedom of movement for all. Open the borders.
2. Immediate Regularisation and Full Rights: Citizenship for all migrants and an end to the No Recourse to Public Funds.
2. Scrap the Anti-Union and Anti-Immigrant Laws: End the Hostile Environment, the Rwanda Act, and the ban on asylum seekers working.
3. Workplace Solidarity Across Borders: Mass unionisation drives in all sectors, fighting for improved conditions for all workers regardless of immigration status.
3. A Workers’ Welcome: For a massive programme of council house building and full funding for the NHS and services, to ensure every new arrival and every existing resident has access to a home, a doctor, and a school. Make the bosses pay through a wealth tax.
4. Unite the Class: For a mass, militant trade union movement that organises all workers, regardless of origin, to fight for jobs, wages, and conditions for all.
The choice is not between the Tories’ and Reform’s barbarism and Labour’s managed cruelty. The choice is between the nationalism of the bosses and the internationalism of the working class. As the labour movement, our message must be clear: our enemies are the bosses who exploit division, not the workers who cross borders. The real crisis isn’t immigration – it’s capitalism.
References
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