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As the UK’s Labour government this week unveiled its new plan to curb immigration to the country, the language used by Prime Minister Keir Starmer was more focused on pleasing the far right than finding a real solution to an increasingly complex problem.

Like many countries in Europe, the UK has been plagued by years of mismanaged policies relating to migrants and asylum seekers. These have been compounded by a diminishing workforce caused by budget cuts, a lack of training, Generation Z’s general approach to work and the rise of gig and other forms of employment. So, skilled and unskilled workers either recruited from abroad or who have arrived illegally have filled the gaps in the employment market. Meanwhile, there is a ballooning number of people who are long-term unemployed and are burdening the benefits system.

When announcing his plan for legislation on the issue, Starmer claimed that soaring immigration had done “incalculable” damage to UK society and risked converting Britain into an “island of strangers.” He may not be too far wrong about the latter when you consider the failure of various governments’ attempts to encourage integration. If appropriate guidance were given, newcomers could better align with so-called British values and norms.

What is alarming is that the new bill and its presentation point to a UK that is abandoning its long-held belief that foreign workers often contribute to the national economy and its growth.

One expected a rather different choice of words from a Labour leader. If anything, this anti-migrant vocabulary, which echoes that of the right-wing populists, could threaten the Labour Party’s majority in Parliament at the next election, if not completely overturn it.

This anti-migrant vocabulary could threaten the Labour Party’s majority in Parliament at the next election

Mohamed Chebaro

Starmer is risking a great deal by lurching to the right on the migration file. He will soon find himself unable to match the right wing’s more hard-line ideology, which is on the rise in Britain. Immigration numbers keep rising due to a simple cocktail of workforce needs, inadequate enforcement laws and less-than-scrupulous companies using the laws on importing workers to milk a UK benefits system that is outdated to say the least.

The new legislation, if approved, would aim to end the “failed experiment in open borders,” implemented through a complex post-Brexit work permit system that has seen net migration soar to nearly 1 million a year.

The new white paper includes plans to abolish overseas care workers visas and increase from five to 10 years the length of time most people will have to live in the UK before they can apply for citizenship. English language rules will also be strengthened, with dependents needing to have a basic understanding of English to be allowed in, while the length of time students can stay in the country after completing their studies will be reduced.

What Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who in 2016 voted for the UK to remain in the EU, is proposing could be useful, at least in part. But not when it is done as a response to renewed pressure following the controversial anti-immigration Reform UK party’s gains in this month’s local elections.

The government must be careful and ensure that ending the so-called failed experiment in open borders does not also shut the door on the workers needed to keep the British economy running.

As a resident of the UK for many years, I have often heard people repeat the mantra that immigrants are squeezing British people out of work. In the same way, working-class native Britons also feel irked if social security benefits are extended to working-class newcomers.

After Brexit, successive Conservative governments found it necessary to loosen the visa system to fill the vacancies created by European laborers leaving the country as it exited the EU. It quickly became obvious that many workers who used to claim that they were being squeezed out of the employment market by foreign workers did not rush to get a job. Instead, employers had to source, for example, nursing and care staff from as far away as the Philippines and fruit pickers from Central Asia and the Far East.

Starmer should make it a priority to try to understand why some Britons rank immigration as their top concern

Mohamed Chebaro

Starmer and his government should make it a priority to try to understand why some Britons rank immigration as their top concern and persuade them that a progressive economy needs to evolve continuously, as long as there are guardrails against abuse. They should also aim to understand why an advanced economy like the UK still has about 1.5 million unemployed people and 9 million who are economically inactive.

One can surely blame government austerity for failing to get enough funding to the public and private sectors to ramp up education and training. But blame must also be apportioned to the nation as a whole for not being able to get enough of the 10 million out-of-work citizens to fill the 150,000 vacancies in the care sector, while a similar number could fill unskilled labor positions.

This would allow the government to focus its resources on pursuing fraudulent recruiters selling visas to would-be migrants for jobs that only exist on paper, as well as chasing the people smugglers who continue to fill boats bound for the UK.

The new immigration bill should not be about appeasement. Rather, it provides the opportunity for a sober, honest exchange between the government, its political opponents and society as a whole. The state cannot deliver everything that people desire without some trade-offs. Common sense must prevail. And people should not bow to the right-wing manipulators and fake news merchants that caused Brexit by peddling lies.

If Starmer goes down the road of appeasement, tomorrow he might feel pushed to freeze migration entirely. Then who will tell the pensioners in Middle England that not only will they not have doctors or nurses, but also that there will be no carers, not even migrants who speak broken English?

• Mohamed Chebaro is a British-Lebanese journalist with more than 25 years’ experience covering war, terrorism, defense, current affairs and diplomacy.