Before and after Brexit got done, it was widely assumed to be fueled by Little Englanders intent on erecting walls around Albion to keep out the unwashed masses. One study from 2017 out of Goldmsith’s University in London found that “xenophobia, or a fear of other groups, was a strong predictor of a ‘Brexit’ vote regardless of people’s age, gender or education.” The country had become an insular polity, an empire inverted.

Now we learn that was a load of bollocks. Data from the Financial Times demonstrate that the opposite is true. An article entitled “Britain Is Now a High-Immigration Country and Most Are Fine With That” argues that Brexit has been a boon and not a barrier to those seeking the “sunlit uplands of liberty” as Churchill once labeled them. Last year witnessed record levels of visas issued and people living in Britain who were born overseas.

The author, John Burn-Murdoch, writes that “one of the most striking dynamics in the past five years has been the decoupling of concern about immigration from immigration levels themselves.” In other words, Brexit appears to have transconfected a kind of immigration alchemy, with the numbers of immigrants rising and anti-immigrant sentiment tumbling. The end of free movement has been the beginning of an attitudinal revolution.  

Before Brexit, half of Britons labeled immigration “one of the most important issues facing the UK.” That number is now less than 10 percent. A think tank, British Futures, finds that the English prefer a system that “prioritizes having control of who can and can’t come into the country,” versus “one which deters people from coming.” Anti-immigrant sentiment wasn’t catalyzed by Brexit, but rather cured by it, even as numbers spiked this year. 

There is resistance to certain asylum seekers. Also, the Telegraph reports that two dozen Conservative Members of Parliament composed a letter to the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, warning that the “drastic increase” in immigration “undeniably undermines” Brexit’s purpose. We find that unconvincing, given the FT data and the fact that these parliamentary objections come from Red Wall districts (seats captured by Tories from the Labor heartland).

Over all, though, the Brexit example would be a useful study for the apostles of open borders in this country. Democrats widely slammed President Trumps’ attempts to secure the physical border in the southwest. One commentator for Bloomberg argued that a completed border wall would be “the largest monument to white supremacy ever constructed.” Senator Schumer called it a “pointless burden on the American people.” 

Under President Biden, 234,000 migrants attempted to cross the southern border in April, topping the previous 22-year high set just the month before and constituting a 1,268 percent increase over April 2020. Vice President Kamala Harris, tasked with taking point on the “root causes” of illegal immigration, has seen her political standing erode. Those in her camp have anonymously grumbled that she has been dealt a losing hand.     

We have always been partisans of robust legal immigration, which redeems a grievance in the Declaration of Independence,* renews our country’s spirit, and affirms our values. We reject the view of those who see immigrants to these shores as burdens rather than blessings. The news from across the pond, however, shows that open borders lead to closed minds, and that unmitigated porousness inculcates anxiety rather than hospitality. Brexit was not the death knell for immigration. It was its savior.  

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* Of George III the Declaration of Independence complained: “He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.”