Dealing With Immigration In The UK

Prime Minister Theresa May has insisted that immigration is an issue for "whole of the UK." Speaking about the need for a unified way to deal with immigration in the UK, the under-fire Prime Minister was indicating that Scotland needed to take the same view as the rest of the UK in a "same policy approach."

May was responding to research carried out by Sir John Curtice for the National Centre for Social Research. The research suggested that most Scottish citizens did not want the country to remain in the European single market and were in support of restricting immigration from other EU member states. Holyrood wants powers to be devolved to Scotland, but Westminster is against this change in the status quo.

The survey showed that 59 percent of Scottish voters felt that EU migrants should apply to come to the UK, this is slightly under the 64 percent across Britain as a whole. "Contrary to the presumption of the Scottish Government, most voters in Scotland are not keen to see Scotland remain in the single market and thus continue freedom of movement, should the rest of the UK leave it."

The study also backed up the idea that immigration powers should stay in Whitehall, this will be a setback for Nicola Sturgeon and her Scottish National Party colleagues. Not all that long ago the SNP were on a war footing and insisting that they would once again be trying to hold another referendum on independence, it seems now that if anything, Scots are even more likely to remain in the United Kingdom.

The Prime Minister explained "As we leave the European Union, we will be able to introduce our own immigration rules and to control that immigration to Britain from Europe. The only point of differentiation is that, of course, we do have a Scotland-only shortage occupation list to recognise particular market needs in Scotland." She went on to say "For the most part, that actually matches the UK-wide shortage occupation list, which shows that this is an issue for the whole of the UK and that we need the same policy approach."

It seems that even after some time, Brexit still causes much uncertainty in the UK. Though it is remarkable that the split from Scotland to the rest of the UK is so small and shows a step change in Scotland. Nicola Sturgeon will now be rightly worried about the future of the SNP, as Scotland, at least for the near future, is determined to stay British.

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