Double-bind
POLITICIANS love to talk tough on immigration. A stern piece of legislation tightening the requirements for citizenship or asylum allows a government to cut a resolute air without alienating many voters. The Tories pushed through two different immigration acts in the last Parliament alone, helping to increase the number of people slated for deportation by more than 50% over the past three years. But this seeming severity was mere posturing: over the same period, the number of people removed did not budge. In 1996, over 20,000 cases were begun, but barely 5,000 deportations actually carried out.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Double-bind”
From the September 13th 1997 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionDiscover more
British MPs vote in favour of assisted dying
A monumental social reform is closer to being realised
The slow death of a Labour buzzword
And what that says about Britain’s place in the world
Britain’s Supreme Court considers what a woman is
At last. Britons had been wondering what those 34m people who are not men might be
Can potholes fuel populism?
A new paper looks at one explanation for the rise of Reform UK
Are British voters as clueless as Labour’s intelligentsia thinks?
How the idea of false consciousness conquered the governing party