The United Kingdom’s Conservative Party suffered its worst defeat in almost 200 years in its July 4, 2024, elections. Two of the key issues in that race were the cost of living and immigration levels that were too high.

The current Labour Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, says the government in which she serves “inherited a broken immigration and asylum system that the previous government left in chaos.”

In a speech on Nov. 28, the new prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, said that nearly a million immigrants came to Britain in the year ending on June 2023 — “four times the migration levels compared with 2019.” This wasn’t just bad luck or taking your eye off the ball. It was deliberate. The previous administration had liberalized British immigration policies and turned “Britain into a one-nation experiment in open borders.”

In May, Starmer published a white paper, “Restoring Control over the Immigration System,” that outlined his administration’s immigration plan going forward. In addition to measures to reduce immigration to the UK, it provides that “if people want to come to Britain to start a new life, they must contribute, learn our language and integrate.” It also provides that if “employers want to bring workers from overseas, then they must also invest in the skills of workers already in Britain.”

Some of the measures in that plan would be useful here in the U.S., too.

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