The anti-immigrant campaign

The Government is forcing immigrants into poverty as a means of controlling immigration, the Scottish National Party warned. Stuart McDonald, an SNP’s immigration spokesperson, said the Government had imposed a “conscious government policy of deliberate destitution as a tool of immigration control”.

He said that the Immigration Act, passed earlier this year, would make it difficult for migrants to make ends meet. The law makes it harder for undocumented migrants to get jobs, allows the government to seize their bank accounts and financial assets, and makes it harder for them to rent homes. 

Hundreds of people have been wrongly refused bank accounts or had their driving licences revoked under the former home secretary Theresa May’s measures to “create a hostile environment for illegal immigrants”, the immigration watchdog has revealed. David Bolt, the chief inspector of borders and immigration, said the Home Office had failed to appreciate the potential impact of such wrong decisions on those affected. May’s “hostile environment measures” to deny public and private services to people with no legal right to be in the UK raises questions about whether ministers were justified in pressing ahead with phase two, due to come into effect next year. The second phase will create a new offence of driving unlawfully in Britain, and banks and building societies will be empowered to close the accounts of immigrants who are in the country illegally and freeze their assets. Bolt said there was insufficient hard evidence to determine whether the measures were achieving what the government intended, such as an increase in those voluntarily returning home.

Foreign students are not viewed as immigrants by the majority of the British public, according to a survey. The poll conducted for Universities UK found that less than a quarter of adults think of international students (24%) or EU students (23%) coming to study in this country as immigrants. Two-thirds said that international students have a positive impact on the local economies of the towns and cities that they study in, and three in five (59%) agreed that their economic contribution helps create jobs. The poll also indicated that seven in ten adults believe it is better if international students use their skills here and work in the UK for a period of time in order to contribute to the economy rather than returning immediately to their home country after completing their study. Almost half (47%) of those polled believed there should be no limit on how long international students should be able to stay and work in the UK after they have completed their study, providing they are employed and contributing to the economy.

But anti-immigration is not just a UK problem. 

It has come to light that in 2015, the French President , Hollande said "I think there are too many arrivals of immigration that shouldn't be there."