Jonathan Portes and Lauren Gilbert
The UK exhibits unusually high and persistent levels of concern about immigration. Survey evidence consistently shows that around 40–50 percent of voters rank immigration among the most important issues facing the country1, with a majority expressing a preference for lower levels.2 This salience has had clear political consequences. The electoral rise of Reform UK has been closely associated with its focus on immigration, while successive governments—across parties—have responded with increasingly restrictive policies.
The UK does not face an immigration crisis in any conventional economic sense. It faces a problem of economic misattribution. Migration has become a focal point for grievances that originate elsewhere in the economy, and policy has followed that misdiagnosis. The consequence is a set of choices that weaken the economy’s capacity to address its underlying challenges. In that sense, immigration policy has become part of the problem it is intended to solve.
