Hostile environment: the UK government's draconian immigration policy explained
Erica Consterdine, University of Sussex Immigration policy under Theresa May’s tenure might be the most draconian in Britain’s history. Never has an administration focused so much time and effort on an anti-migration policy – and one that is failing by all counts at that. Countless restrictive measures have been placed on almost every migration stream since 2010, when the coalition government set itself a flawed net migration target. This was driven by a Conservative manifesto pledge to reduce annual immigration from hundreds of thousands of people to tens of thousands. Behind the changes to the immigration rules has been an overarching policy to create a “hostile environment”. The public is now seeing the harsh and inhumane implications of this policy, with the Windrush generation , who helped to rebuild post-war Britain, being denied their rights. But what is this hostile environment and where did this policy come from? The story starts back in 2004, when the Labour...