The Parallel Between UK and US Immigration Policies

Open border policies are changing demographics

Galveston constables apprehend six illegal aliens who were being smuggled from the U.S.–Mexico border, through Kinney County, Texas, on Aug. 28, 2022. Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times

Commentary

Two shocking immigration-related stories highlight open border fiascos in the United States and the UK.

Back in August, the Federation for American Immigration Reform issued a statement that included this sentence: “July numbers bring the total of illegal aliens crossing our borders since President Biden took office to 4.9 million, including some 900,000 ‘gotaways’ who eluded apprehension and have since disappeared into American communities.”

The second is this incredible headline from the UK: “Church of England could be disestablished in Parliament as Christianity now minority faith.” Demographics drive destiny, it would appear, as Leicester and Birmingham have become the first UK cities to have greater than 50 percent of their populations consist of minority groups.

Were these the natural course of events in both countries, or were they the result of purposely implemented policies?

Let’s attempt to answer those questions as we examine how immigration law evolved in both countries.

The UK Experience

Two main immigration concepts turned UK demographics upside-down since World War II: the British Nationality Act of 1948 and free movement among European Union populations guaranteed under Article 3(2) of the Treaty on European Union.

The 1948 act, which was passed into law by Clement Atlee’s Labour government, granted subjects of the British Empire the right to live and work in the UK. The main provision was this: “Every person who under this Act is a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies or who under any enactment for the time being in force in any country mentioned in subsection (3) of this section is a citizen of that country shall by virtue of that citizenship have the status of a British subject.” The act covered people from these countries: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, Newfoundland, India, Pakistan, Southern Rhodesia, and Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon).

One of the key rights of citizens of the EU is free movement among EU nations. As the European Parliament website notes, “It is this EU citizenship that underpins the right of persons to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member States.” The legal basis is provided in Article 3(2) of the Treaty on European Union and Article 21 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, as established by the Treaty of Maastricht of 1992.

The results were entirely predictable and surely must have been what the Labour Party particularly wanted, since the Labour government of 1997–2010 greatly relaxed immigration controls. According to Migration Watch UK, “the pace and scale of migration increased to a level without historical precedent, [and] between 2001 and 2018, the foreign-born population doubled from 4.6 million to more than nine million” to a whopping 13.6 percent of the total population of 66 million (as of mid-2017).

Illegal immigrants react onboard a UK Border Force vessel HMC Speedwell after being picked up at sea, as they're brought into the Marina in Dover, England, on Dec. 21, 2021. Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images

Furthermore, in England and Wales, the Muslim population increased from 2.7 million in 2011 to 3.9 million in 2021.

Another result of these immigration pressures is that “only 46.2% of the population of England and Wales described themselves as Christian” in the 2021 census, and “the percentage of people saying they had no religion jumped from around a quarter in 2011 (25.2%) to over a third in 2021 (37.2%),” according to the Office for National Statistics.

Indeed, these rapid demographic changes and the resistance of many of the immigrants to “British acculturation and assimilation” were some of the impetuses behind popular support for the UK’s exiting the EU on Jan. 31, 2020, which ended the free movement of migrants from continental Europe to the UK.

And now, in 2022, there are calls in Parliament for the disestablishment of the Church of England and its influence on school curricula, as noted above. What other similar earthquakes are in store for the UK over time?

It’s the immigration policies of the government since 1948 that are the root causes of the dramatic demographic changes that are continuing to churn culture, society, and politics in the UK.

The US Parallel

U.S. immigration was similarly influenced by government policies over the decades. To fully absorb and assimilate millions of immigrants from Europe in the early 20th century, U.S. immigration laws were enacted by Congress such that there was virtually zero immigration into the United States between 1925 and 1965, except for carefully selected entrants via a strict quota system.

According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 “abolished the national origins quota system but still maintained the principle of numerical restriction by establishing 170,000 Hemispheric and 20,000 per country ceilings.” That act, passed by a Democrat-controlled Congress and signed by a Democratic president, was the first of many efforts aimed at opening immigration and granting amnesty to millions of illegal aliens in the United States.

In a deal between then-President Ronald Reagan and the Democratic Congress in 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act was passed. It granted amnesty to aliens who had resided in the United States in an unlawful status since Jan. 1, 1982, in exchange for a supposed “tightening up” of immigration law to correct flaws and stop the flow of illegals into the United States. However, the 1986 act worked in reverse, as it invited a subsequent surge in illegal immigration to more than 8 million” by 1996.

A U.S. Border Patrol agent directs an illegal alien after he crossed into the United States from Mexico through a gap in the border wall separating Algodones, Mexico, from Yuma, Ariz., on May 16, 2022. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

In response to popular pressure to deal with the illegal immigration problem, the 2006 Secure Fence Act authorized the construction of a partial border fence along 700 miles of the 2,000-mile U.S.–Mexico border.

In 2012, then-President Barack Obama signed an executive order creating Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which offered deferred action from deportation and eligibility for a work permit for illegal aliens brought into the United States as children. The Democrats have used DACA ever since to advocate for more immigration and amnesty. Still, their efforts were stymied by Donald Trump, who campaigned in 2016 to “build the wall” on the U.S.–Mexico border to stop illegal immigration. Democrats in Congress and open-border Republicans were able to largely thwart the completion of that wall by withholding funds for its completion during the Trump presidency.

Beginning almost immediately in January 2021, the Biden administration supported a return to Obama-era open borders policies and a corresponding flood of illegal aliens into the United States. One of President Joe Biden’s first actions was to sign an executive order (EO) for, among other things, halting the forced deportation of illegal aliens for 100 days. The order also rescinded Trump’s EO 13748, which contained various actions directed at “encouraging” states and municipalities to assist the federal government in incarcerating, prosecuting, and deporting criminal illegal aliens.

Biden also shut down the border wall construction and changed procedures at the border to facilitate amnesty requests for people trying to get into the United States. What better ways than these to signal to illegal aliens that the U.S. border is wide open?

One of the first acts of the Department of Justice under Biden was the restoration of grants for sanctuary cities. The Trump administration had curtailed the grants to disincentivize cities from shielding illegal immigrant criminals from prosecution and/or deportation. That action was yet another window into the Biden administration’s intentions to open the border as wide as possible.

The border wall’s accompanying road, lights, cameras, and sensors remain unfinished since January 2021, when President Joe Biden halted all border wall construction, in Cochise County, Ariz., on Dec. 6, 2021. Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times

After a year-long battle through the federal courts in June, the U.S. Supreme Court “upheld Joe Biden’s attempt to unwind one of the Trump administration’s signature immigration policies. ... The nation’s highest court found that the Department of Homeland Security did have the authority to end enforcement of the Migrant Protection Protocols, better known by the Trump-given nickname ‘Remain in Mexico,’” the Daily Beast reported.

The Democrat push for keeping the border wide open has continued relentlessly on other fronts:

CNN reported that “a federal judge put on hold for five weeks his ruling striking down the controversial Title 42 immigration policy, a Trump-era rule that’s allowed US authorities to expel more than 1 million migrants who crossed the US–Mexico border.”

Some 71 mayors called on congressional leaders to fast-track immigration protections for “Dreamers” (the Orwellian term for the 1.3 million DACA-eligible people) before the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives next month.

To cap it all, Senator Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) recently called for amnesty for “all 11 million illegal aliens” in the United States.

Concluding Thoughts

Open border policies in the UK and United States directly result from laws passed by left-wing governments in both countries.

The UK is undergoing some dramatic cultural, societal, and political changes largely because of a long-term open border strategy pursued over the decades by the Labour Party (with some Tory assistance—or at least negligence—along the way).

Although lagging behind the UK, the United States is following the same trajectory because of the open border policies of the Democratic Party (with the assistance of the Republican establishment).

Americans simply need to observe what’s happening in the UK to see what’s in store here unless U.S. immigration laws are strictly enforced and a physical wall is completed on the U.S.–Mexico border.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.