Will Britain close its doors to immigrants post-Brexit?

Details have not yet been forthcoming, but Britain will soon have a new immigration policy. What will that mean for businesses and investors?

The points-based system will continue to welcome immigrant healthcare workers
(Image credit: Credit: Tommy London / Alamy Stock Photo)

What changes are proposed to Britain's immigration system?

Like much of what the Johnson government has got planned, the broad outline is visible, but the detail is hazy. We know for sure that once the Brexit transition period is over (which the government says will be at the end of 2020) EU nationals will no longer have the automatic right to live and work in the UK. Freedom of movement will end. Instead, “Global Britain” will treat potential immigrants from all countries equally, deploying what the government calls an “Australian points-based system” to assess applicants. Although the government has now abandoned the Conservatives’ previous promises to bring net immigration below 100,000, it is clear that it wants the level to fall. “We are not going to fix on an arbitrary target,” said foreign secretary Dominic Raab during the election campaign. But “by exercising a points system you bring it down year-by-year”.

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Simon Wilson’s first career was in book publishing, as an economics editor at Routledge, and as a publisher of non-fiction at Random House, specialising in popular business and management books. While there, he published Customers.com, a bestselling classic of the early days of e-commerce, and The Money or Your Life: Reuniting Work and Joy, an inspirational book that helped inspire its publisher towards a post-corporate, portfolio life.   

Since 2001, he has been a writer for MoneyWeek, a financial copywriter, and a long-time contributing editor at The Week. Simon also works as an actor and corporate trainer; current and past clients include investment banks, the Bank of England, the UK government, several Magic Circle law firms and all of the Big Four accountancy firms. He has a degree in languages (German and Spanish) and social and political sciences from the University of Cambridge.