Immigration Woes

By Nigel Thrift. Around the world, immigration has become a prime political concern. I hardly need to point to the number of countries where immigration has become a major electoral issue, whether in the United States, Europe, or Australia.
And, of course, immigration policy can cut across university policy, often in destructive ways. The U.K. has become a depressing example of precisely that point. A coalition government has come to power committed to reducing net migration to “tens of thousands”—the current figure is 216,000—by the time of the next election, in 2015. The only way that it might realistically do this, given that E.U. citizens have free right of access, is by bearing down on international-student numbers.