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Immigration and asylum policy under Cameron’s Conservatives

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Abstract

This article draws on party documents and media coverage in order to consider the degree to which ‘modernisation’ is evident in Conservative immigration policy during the last decade, separating that policy into four areas: economic, students, family and asylum. It concludes that, after nearly two years of virtual silence on the issue intended to help David Cameron ‘detoxify’ the Tory brand, the outstanding feature of Conservative immigration policy since late 2007 has been the ratcheting up of hard-line rhetoric and policies – this despite an initial stress on distinguishing between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ immigration designed to placate both traditionalists, on the one hand, and modernisers and business backers, on the other. The move towards restriction accelerated after the party entered government and as concerns about UKIP mounted. Family migration policy is hardly a shining example of ‘compassionate Conservatism’, although aspects of the latter are clearly visible in the government’s treatment of particular groups of asylum applicants. Meanwhile, chronic internal tensions on both economic and student migration remain unresolved. Moreover, despite its increasingly restrictive measures, the party missed its target of reducing net annual migration ‘to the tens of thousands’ – in part because it was ultimately unwilling to abandon freedom of movement within the EU.

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Notes

  1. As ever migrants have found ways to exploit the new emphasis on business people. It was reported in July 2014 that criteria for entrepreneur visas would be tightened, following research that found that many were not working as entrepreneurs setting up businesses but had taken low-skilled jobs (Barrett, 2014). Tax returns found that individuals whose students visas had expired were transferring to entrepreneur status; this visa category will now be much more difficult to obtain, and more documentation of business activities will be required.

  2. The Thatcher government did try to prevent women in the United Kingdom (who were British residents) from bringing in their fiancés and husbands from overseas – an issue which mainly affected those with relatives on the Indian sub-continent. This restriction did not apply to men, who could bring in their fiancées or wives from abroad, ostensibilty because it was ‘normal’ for the female partner to join the man wherever he might be settled. The policy did not survive the declaration from the ECHR in May 1985 that the Conservative government’s immigration rules were unlawful. The rules were found to have discriminated against women: ‘under the rules, foreign men with full residency rights in the United Kingdom can bring in their wives or fiancées, but foreign women cannot’. In response to the ECHR ruling, the Conservative government announced that it would tighten up matters further still. New rules made it more difficult for men as well as women who had settled in the United Kingdom, but were not British citizens, to be joined by their spouses from abroad. Archive material from National Archives, dated 15 November 1979 and from press coverage archive 29 May 1985.

  3. From press coverage archive 4 January 1989, The Independent.

  4. Personal interview with former immigration minister from 1990s.

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Correspondence to Rebecca Partos.

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Partos, R., Bale, T. Immigration and asylum policy under Cameron’s Conservatives. Br Polit 10, 169–184 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/bp.2015.20

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