With Brexit negotiations expected to start soon, Theresa May will strive to achieve what she believes most Leave voters want: a significant reduction in immigration. It will be difficult. Incomers from outside the EU are already subject to strict entry criteria, yet the most recent statistics show that a net 164,000 non-EU immigrants came to the UK in the year to September 2016 — nearly as many as the 165,000 that came from the EU.
If border checks have left non-EU immigration at this level, why would imposing post-Brexit controls on EU citizens bring their numbers down? That is a problem for the prime minister. A net 56,000 UK citizens left to live abroad last year, leaving the net migration figure at 273,000, slightly down on the year before, but nowhere near the Conservative government’s promise to reduce it to less than 100,000.
With hospitals, farms and sandwich shops saying they cannot manage without foreign labour, Mrs May is likely to aim at one of her favourite targets: foreign students. At the Conservative party conference in October, Amber Rudd, the home secretary, promised tougher controls on international students who wanted to enrol at UK universities.