Immigration as a Political Tool: How UK Politicians Shape Public Opinion for Electoral Gains
By Olakunle Agboola – Immigration is big politics and even bigger business. In the UK, it’s weaponized during elections, sold to the public as a threat, and secretly mined for billions.
While politicians vow to tighten borders and “take back control,” behind the scenes, migration is a golden goose paying up-front, taxed heavily, and barred from public sympathy.
Under successive Conservative governments since 2010, this double game has been perfected tough on migrants in speeches, soft on cashing in behind the scenes.
Immigration has long been a central issue in UK politics, often exploited by politicians to shape public opinion and secure electoral victories. In this discourse, migration is typically portrayed as a crisis, with politicians pledging to tighten borders and reduce migrant numbers.
Yet, beneath the political rhetoric lies a truth: the government heavily depends on migration as a major source of revenue. While the public is frequently led to believe that migrants burden the system, the reality is that migration is a valuable economic asset, with foreign nationals paying significant fees to study, work, and settle in the UK.
The Political Rhetoric and the Economic Reality
Since Brexit, the Conservative-led UK government has intensified migration controls, framing these measures as efforts to protect jobs and resources for British citizens. However, post-Brexit labour shortages particularly in healthcare, education, and technology have exposed the UK’s reliance on foreign workers.
Despite this, the government continues to boost work and student visa approvals, especially for professionals from Nigeria, Ghana, and India, while doubling down on anti-migrant messaging in the public sphere.
This contradiction is glaring. While politicians claim to be reducing migration, they simultaneously approve thousands of visas, ensuring a steady stream of income from visa fees, health surcharges, and certificate of sponsorship (COS) renewals. Migration is not merely tolerated it’s monetised.
The UK’s Post-Brexit Migration Revenue
Post-Brexit, the UK has seen a surge in immigration-generated revenue. In 2023 alone, the government earned an estimated £6.3 billion from visa fees, immigration surcharges, and related charges.
These numbers have grown steadily, driven by international students, skilled workers, and family visa applicants despite the Conservative government’s public promise to reduce net migration.
The Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS) alone has raked in billions, with migrants paying steep up-front fees for healthcare they may never need or access.
And yet, public discourse continues to paint migrants as economic liabilities—rather than the lifeblood of sectors that would otherwise collapse.
A Hidden Economic Engine
One of the most profitable arms of the UK’s migration framework is international education. African students especially from Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya are charged exorbitantly high tuition fees compared to their local peers.
For many UK universities, these fees are a financial lifeline. Case in point: the University of Southampton doubled its international fee income from £85.5 million to £170 million between 2021 and 2022.
This isn’t accidental. The government actively promotes the education route to attract foreign funds. But the student journey is no fairy tale. These African students arrive on expensive student visas, working multiple jobs to survive without access to public funds.
After graduation, many transition to work visas, incurring more costs, jumping through more hoops, and chasing permanent residency like it’s a disappearing mirage.
A Strategic Money-Making Machine
The healthcare sector offers a stark glimpse into the UK’s deepening reliance on migrant labour. Since Brexit, thousands of African and Asian healthcare workers have been recruited to fill critical staffing shortages, a shortfall largely created by Tory-led policies.
But legal entry comes at a steep cost. Migrants must shell out thousands in visa fees, renewal charges, and the notorious Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS), long before they can even think of applying for Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR).
Nigerians alone have taken up more than 279,000 new jobs in the UK since 2019. Yet, the financial toll of simply staying legal keeps climbing, while the dream of permanent settlement grows more elusive.
Speaking to our correspondent, Mariam, a Nigerian support worker working in a UK care home revealed she paid over £20,000 to her sponsor just to enter the system legally. For the past two years, she’s worked grueling 70-hour weeks on night shifts, earning just £700 a month after deductions.
“I’m just trying to survive,” she said. “But with the bills piling up, I can’t even report the abuse. I’m scared of losing my Certificate of Sponsorship.”
The Exploitation of COS
Beyond the official exploitation lies something more sinister: the COS black market. The Certificate of Sponsorship (COS) essential for transitioning to work visas, has become a playground for crooks and fake agents.
Some migrants are charged up to £20,000 for dodgy sponsorships that never lead to jobs. Others find their visas revoked overnight by unscrupulous sponsors, leaving them undocumented and at risk.
The government has been slow in action to these complaints. The Home Office, under Conservative leadership, continues piling more costs and conditions on migrants, turning what should be opportunity into an extortion racket.
The Divide Between British Citizens and Migrants
British citizens are being sold a lie: that migrants are here to live off benefits. The reality? Most African migrants don’t even qualify for public funds. They work long hours, pay taxes, prop up public services—and still get blamed for the country’s woes.
The government keeps migrants essential but invisible. Nurses by day, ghost citizens by night.
Even as universities, NHS trusts, and big businesses thrive on migrant labour, Conservative politicians keep fueling public sentiments. The result? A toxic divide. One side is kept fearful, the other, voiceless.
The Immigrant Struggle
For many African immigrants, the UK has become a land of labour without liberty. They are legally present, working critical roles, yet scared of the next policy.
They face ever-rising visa fees, no access to universal funds, and fear rejection or deportation. From NHS nurses to tech workers, they’re the invisible scaffolding of the economy rewarded with silence and stress.
Many are blackmailed by sponsors, exploited by employers, and crushed by survival. Their mental health deteriorates. Families crumble. Dreams break.
Some are so financially strapped that they can’t afford to pay rent and are on the verge of eviction. Many have become daily markers at food banks, their dignity bartered for a tin of beans.
This isn’t migration as many have professed, it’s a modern-day extraction.
While migrants grind, the system shifts the goalposts. Settlement becomes a cruel illusion. But they’re not begging for favours, just fairness to survive.
Migration as a Business, not a Crisis
This has become debatable as many have argued that migration is not a crisis but a business model.
Francis, living in London, is of the opinion that the Conservative government isn’t closing the door to migrants, but they will keep on selling tickets, jacking up prices annually, and blaming the passengers for the turbulence.
‘Migrants have become essential yet expendable products. They are sold on dreams, taxed for entry, blamed for inflation, and ignored when they collapse under the weight of it all.
If there’s any crisis, it’s the moral bankruptcy of a system that profits off pain’.
Time to Follow the Money
The question isn’t whether the UK can survive without migrants. It’s whether the country can continue milking migrants for billions while gaslighting the public into thinking it’s doing them a favour.
The British public deserves the truth. Migrants deserve justice.
And the Conservative government must answer for the hypocrisy at the heart of its immigration policy.
Britain’s migrant economy isn’t broken, it’s rigged.
