Welcome to Britain

Britain thinks of itself as a welcoming country, but the reality has always been different. Migration is viewed benevolently when hypothetical, but heaven forbid anyone should actually try to migrate here. Nicholas Winton famously had to forge papers to smuggle Jewish children into Britain before the Second World War, and hostility to post-war Commonwealth immigration quickly led to limits being imposed. New arrivals were badly treated, and race equality legislation had to be imposed on a grudging populace.

As if to prove that little has changed, modern immigration policy since 2010 has meant Britain has become a hostile environment for migrants, particularly following the exposure of the Windrush scandal in 2018 and successive Tory governments’ strategies to make staying in the country as difficult as possible, in the hope that people will just leave.

In this innovative and alarming book, blogger and campaigner Colin Yeo exposes the iniquities of an ugly, unfair and failing approach and offers a manifesto for a new immigration system that would roll back the hostile environment laws, consolidate immigration legislation and introduce a statutory time limit on immigration detention.

'An incisive and compelling analysis of how muddled political thinking has caused our immigration laws to go so badly wrong, and what must be done to reform them. Highly readable and cogently argued, a copy should be put on the desk of every tabloid editor and every MP.' – The Secret Barrister

'Colin Yeo presents us with a forensic examination of the UK’s labyrinthine, costly and dehumanising immigration system – a must-read.' – Maya Goodfellow, author of Hostile Environment: How Immigrants Became Scapegoats