The latest Home Office figures show that Britain has sharply reduced the volume of work migration after the post-Brexit surge. In the year ending June 2026, 120,105 Worker visas were granted, including dependants, 30% fewer than a year earlier and 76% below the peak recorded in the year ending December 2023. Of those grants, 49,205 went to main applicants and 70,900 to dependants. The change is significant, but it raises a more important question than the headline number: has the United Kingdom merely reduced admissions, or has it finally begun to build a system capable of governing immigration over time?
Brexit gave Britain a degree of immigration-policy autonomy that EU member states do not possess in the same form. Free movement ended, the points-based system was introduced and Parliament regained wider control over work routes and settlement rules. Yet formal sovereignty is not the same thing as effective control. The rapid expansion of sponsorship after Brexit illustrates the problem. By March 2026, more than 124,000 organisations were licensed to sponsor skilled workers, compared with fewer than 29,000 in 2019. A system can be legally national and politically autonomous while still creating pressures that government later struggles to supervise.
The recent tightening of Skilled Worker eligibility therefore deserves recognition where it produces measurable results. More than 100 occupations were removed from eligibility after the July 2025 changes, and applications have fallen substantially. But reducing numbers cannot become a substitute for migration policy. Labour demand is a relevant factor, not a complete theory of immigration. A worker may fill a vacancy and still face problems of language, family integration, social participation or long-term dependence on a migration route designed primarily around an employer. Conversely, a migrant who integrates successfully should not be treated as merely an interchangeable unit of labour.
This is where the British debate on “earned settlement” becomes particularly important. The Government has proposed a longer default route to permanent settlement, combined with faster access for those who make a stronger contribution, and has already announced a higher English-language requirement for settlement from March 2027. The direction is potentially compatible with a more serious integration policy, but the test should not be reduced to salary, tax paid or years spent in the country. Integration must be assessed as a concrete and verifiable process: language, respect for the law, economic autonomy, family stability, participation in community life and the ability to build a durable relationship with British society.
The paradigm Integrazione o ReImmigrazione offers a framework for doing precisely this. It does not propose collective removal by nationality, ethnicity or political category. Nor does it assume that every person who enters lawfully acquires an automatic claim to permanent residence. Instead, it treats immigration as a sequence of individual legal positions that must be governed: admission, residence, integration, possible settlement and, where the legal conditions for remaining are no longer satisfied, effective return after full procedural guarantees and judicial protection. The rule of law is not an obstacle to enforcement; it is what makes enforcement legitimate.
For Britain, this would also mean placing greater responsibility on sponsors and public authorities. Employers who benefit from overseas recruitment should not be allowed to externalise the social costs of poor recruitment, underpayment, exploitation or sudden dismissal. Government, in turn, should publish clearer data not only on how many visas are issued or revoked, but on what happens afterwards: language attainment, employment continuity, benefit dependence where relevant, criminal offending, family stability, settlement outcomes and return where status ends. A country cannot govern what it does not measure.
The post-Brexit comparison with the European Union is therefore revealing. Britain has more freedom to change its immigration rules quickly, while EU states must operate within a denser common legal framework. But autonomy is valuable only if it produces better outcomes. The United Kingdom should not congratulate itself merely for having “taken back control”, just as the EU should not confuse common rules with an effective common migration policy. The real standard is results: controlled entry, enforceable rules, successful integration for those who remain, and credible return for those who no longer have a lawful basis to stay.
Britain has now shown that it can reduce work-visa volumes. The next stage is harder: to demonstrate that it can distinguish between temporary labour demand and permanent membership of society, measure integration without ideological shortcuts, and make both settlement and return credible. That would move the debate beyond the sterile choice between open-ended migration and mass-remigration slogans. It would amount to something more demanding: governing immigration as a permanent function of the state.
Avv. Fabio Loscerbo
Avvocato Cassazionista
Iscritto nel Registro dei rappresentanti di interessi della Camera dei deputati in materia di Immigrazione
Lobbista registrato presso il Registro per la Trasparenza dell’Unione europea n. 280782895721-36 in materia di Migrazione e Asilo
ORCID: 0009-0004-7030-0428
Articolo redatto con l’ausilio di strumenti di AI, sotto la direzione, revisione e responsabilità editoriale dell’autore.
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