UK attracting fewer migrants
Migration to the UK has dropped sharply. According to Britain's Office for National Statistics the number of newly registered foreigners for the period between September 2015 and September 2016 fell to 273,000 - 50,000 fewer than in the year before. While the UK Minister for Immigration Robert Goodwill described the figures as "very encouraging" the trend elicits harsh criticism from several British newspapers.
London scaring away vital manpower
The British government is doing great harm to the country's economy with its anti-immigration rhetoric, The Times complains:
“The government's attempts to square populist rhetoric with policy will damage the economy as workers are denied entry or choose to go to countries where they feel valued. Standards in the hospitality industry are likely to be an early casualty. A more corrosive outcome will be a coarsening of public life, as overseas citizens are treated at best with Mr Davis's grudging and temporary toleration. It's a national scandal that politicians praise their own purported plain speaking on immigration while abjectly failing to tell the truth about it.”
EU citizens should be allowed to stay in UK
Prime Minister Theresa May should guarantee that all EU citizens living in Britain can remain there after Brexit, the Guardian demands:
“There is great public support for allowing EU citizens here already to stay - so why not open negotiations with that signal of continuing close neighbourliness? Today's figures suggest EU citizens taking flight already. ... Think how differently someone subtler might have approached this phenomenally difficult task, setting out eager for good relations with warmth and amity, careful not to needlessly provoke. ... Nor was there any need to mark immigration as her top red line: in such a complex, multifaceted deal, she has damaged her own negotiating position.”