From my recent article, how as late as the late 1990s, Britain could still be described as the Western world’s foremost ‘would-be zero immigration country'.
Sometimes I think about had we continued like this, we could have been somewhat of a beacon to the rest of Europe, a larger Denmark.
Of course the 80s and early 90s still had their issues. We failed to properly grasp the refugee issue, nor chain migration via marriage from South Asia. But it was a lot better than today.
The full article willsolfiac.com/p/modern-folk-…
In the Thatcher era in most years there was less than 50k net migration per year. Really the Thatcher govt's only big mistake on immigration was not stopping family chain migration from South Asia. They did try, with the primary purpose rule etc, but frankly it should have been banned entirely.
Graph from ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati…
Britain could basically have solved its immigration issue with the Thatcher model plus:
- Banning chain migration via marriage
- Stopping asylum
- A true guest worker model for low skilled work
Our political commentators could then smugly look at the rest of Western Europe as another example of how not to do it, unlike us, who made the wise decision.
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