An Analysis Of UK Immigration Policy Towards EU

After the EU enlargement in 2004, tens of thousands of immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe poured into UK, which brought great pressure to British public service system and brought about strong resentment. At the same time, due to the swamping Euro-crisis and the inefficiency of EU institutions, the wind of Euroscepticism is popular again in Britain. Immigration policy reform towards EU is increasingly urgent under this circumstance.Based on the analysis of the history of British immigration policy, this paper focuses on the British immigration policy towards EU, highlights the formation process of the immigration policy, the function and the reasons of the policy in Cameron’s tenure, and finally forecasts the trend of immigration policy under the relationship between UK and EU.Both in the formation process, history of general immigration policy and EU immigration policy, pragmatism occupied a prominent position. In the history of general immigration policy, federalism and racism dominated the trend alternately, and eventually formed a tightened immigration policy which corresponded to the demand of British labor market. In the formation of immigration policy towards EU, Cameron took advantage of the "fairness" in British welfare system to resist the free movement principle and non-discrimination principle, and finally got compromise from EU renegotiation. But as the current data proved, the effect of EU immigration policy during Cameron’s tenure is not significant.Although the relationship between UK and EU is full of uncertainty, in the area of EU Immigration, the cost of exiting overweighs the benefits of remaining.