Robert Jenrick Advocates for Limit on Net Immigration
The former immigration minister expressed that legal migration is a more significant issue than illegal migration.
Former immigration minister Robert Jenrick has called for a cap on net immigration, stating that a “far more restrictive system” is necessary.
Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Jenrick suggests that the government’s recently-passed Rwanda Bill will soon be among failed policies that did not address illegal migration effectively, but he highlighted legal migration as “a bigger scandal.”
He emphasized, “As offensive and dangerous as illegal migration is, the bigger scandal is the story of legal migration because the numbers involved are so much greater.
“Last year, there were about 30,000 illegal small boat arrivals, but this was dwarfed by the 1.2 million people who arrived here perfectly legally.”
Mr. Jenrick believes that net migration should be reduced to “the tens of thousands.”
“We need to create a far more restrictive system that establishes the UK as the grammar school of the Western world, focusing on attracting the high skill, high wage migrants who will be net contributors to the economy,” he explained.
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“The only way politicians can look voters in the eye and guarantee they can meet their promises to reduce net migration is to introduce a cap which would serve as a democratic lock on numbers.”
He further stated that the cap “should be voted on by all MPs in Parliament in a Migration Budget Debate, alongside forecasted impacts of immigration on housing, infrastructure, and public services”.
Mr. Jenrick stepped down as immigration minister in December to protest against Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda deportation plan, arguing that it would not deter asylum seekers arriving via small boats effectively.
Home Office minister Chris Philp declined to specify a limit on net immigration in response to Mr. Jenrick’s request.
Mr. Philp mentioned on the BBC’s “Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg” program, “I’m not in a position to sit here and advocate for a hard cap today. But what I can say is that we’re taking measures that have been enacted and are now being implemented to reduce legal migration by about 300,000 a year. That’s by significantly increasing salary thresholds. It’s by reducing the numbers of dependents who can come in with migrants.
“I think the British public do want us to control, to significantly reduce migration, both legal migration as well as stop illegal migration.”
Mr Philp also affirmed that the government is “committed to substantially reducing legal migration.”
He added, “We don’t think it’s right to have large-scale, low-skilled migration. We want a much smaller number of high-skilled migrants.”
