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The election campaign silence on immigration has now been broken. Yesterday the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, pledged that a Conservative government would “reduce immigration overall” while

attracting “the highly skilled people we need, such as scientists and doctors”. Patel’s comments mark a decisive shift from the previous commitments to reducing immigration to the “tens of

thousands,” first introduced by David Cameron in 2010. But the UK’s image as a pro-immigration nation has been tarnished over the past decade. Brexit itself has been characterised by many as

an act of isolationism, particularly in the foreign press, and the mistreatment of the Windrush generation has added to the sense that the UK is no longer a desirable destination for

immigrants. Yet, if the scientists and doctors Patel refers to are going to want to live and work in the UK, our standing as an open and tolerant destination will have to be restored. To aid

this process of restoration, the UK must make more of its pro-immigration credentials. First, it should be stressed that UK residents are much more positive about immigrants than all of

Europe’s major economies and many developed countries. Asked how they would feel about having an immigrant as a family member (or a partner), polling found that 65 per cent of UK residents

would be “totally comfortable”, compared with 51 per cent for France, 37 per cent for Germany and just 17 per cent for Italy. More recent YouGov-Cambridge Centre polling suggests that Great

Britain’s residents are more likely than any other European people to believe that the benefits of immigration outweigh the costs than all European countries polled. They are also more

likely to believe this than the Canadians or Japanese. HOW EU RESIDENTS FELT ABOUT HAVING AN IMMIGRANT AS A FAMILY MEMBER (% OF POPULATION) Second, more should be made of the UK’s positive

record on integration – given the economic and educational outcomes of migrants in the UK make it an outlier by European standards. The UK is one of only three countries in the EU where the

children of migrants go on to have a labour force participation rate near to that of UK nationals and better than first-generation immigrants. It is also the only country in which the

children of immigrants in the UK are less likely to leave school earlier than children of UK nationals. And the educational performance of this group in the UK is also better than the native

population; which is true of only a handful of European countries. And finally, the misapprehension that Brexit was merely an expression of intolerance towards immigrants must be

dismantled. Back in 2017, Open Europe launched a research project on attitudes towards immigration. What we found was that in contrast to much of the media commentary, public attitudes

towards immigration were much more nuanced than was (and most likely still is) widely recognised. In particular, the public expressed a preference for controlling immigration (56 per cent)

over merely reducing the number of people coming to the UK (36 per cent), and were over ten times more concerned with whether an immigrant had a criminal record than their ethnicity.

Moreover, there was significant support for immigrants coming to the UK to fill socially useful roles, and net positive support (58 per cent) for those filling roles where the UK labour

market experiences “skill shortages”. On the other hand, there was also support for greater restrictions on migrant access to welfare. The public’s concern with immigration has also declined

since the Brexit result. Ipsos MORI’s latest issues index found that only 10 per cent of the public cited immigration as their main concern, compared to nearly 50 per cent prior to the 2016

Brexit referendum. This decline might reasonably reflect the belief that Brexit — and the Prime Minister’s talk of a points-based immigration system — will deliver the level of control that

was discussed during the referendum campaign. Public support in the UK for greater controls on immigration mustn’t be mistaken for intolerance of immigrants, which the data suggests is not

the case.