Priti Patel's Immigration Balance

Priti Patel is going to have a difficult balancing act to pull a viable immigration policy together.  At the moment she is still doing the standard points based system slogan.  Changing that slogan into a policy will be tough.

Firstly, many of the leave voters expected a fall in numbers and will be bitterly disappointed if they don't get one.  Promising that businesses will still be able to import Labour is all very well, but areas like hospitality or seasonal picking need huge numbers of people and that need them on a certain timescale.

The promise of requiring English might also be problematic.  Many immigrants might want to here precisely because they are learning English.  Others might have skills (musicians for example) but poor language skills.  Some of the communities that she promised might see improvements in immigration practices, e.g. making it easier for Asian people to meet their families may find that their relatives are found lacking in languages.  She will also need to find solutions to some of the "hostile environment" practices that are frankly racist and also the post referendum atmosphere where indigenous ethnic minority people are now experiencing racism. 

It is also a paradox given her "free market" approach that she now appears to want to plan and direct businesses in a decidedly non Tory way: keeping tabs on who is employed, where when and why.  The effective creation of a kind of ausländer database would alarm many libertarians, although we don't seem to have many of those left.