o help give context to my subjective opinions relating to UK immigration legislation and how it impacts fellow South African passport holders in 2016, it is best to take past developments into consideration.
This helps understand the motivations that serve as a driving force behind the changes taking place.
David Cameron, from my perspective, is the agent causing all the resistance that the rest of the world experiences when wanting to live, work and settle in the UK. He is the reason for the difficulties that South Africans are experiencing when wanting to relocate to the UK.
I would even go as far as saying that it can be concluded that David Cameron, the UK’s current Prime Minister (hereafter referred to as “PM” – which in SA terms is equivalent to their President), is currently (and has been) adopting a very xenophobic approach to immigration.
One can easily relate and understand his thought process, even though it is short sighted and takes little consideration for future implications.
David Cameron explained
David Camerons politic career took off right at the beginning of the 2008/2009 financial recession.
The political party David Cameron represents is the Conservative party (which I cannot draw similarities to with SA politics unfortunately). All I can give witness to is the fact that his approach to immigration is conservative. He wants to protect the British people and enable local jobs to only be taken by local people (as opposed to foreigners “stealing” positions). This is his motivation behind immigration rulings which I describe as noble and naive.
When voting took place in 2010, David Cameron’s Conservative party did not win majority vote. This tells me that the citizens of the UK were not convinced in his approach and that the whole country was divided (not many believed that his promises would deliver the best results for their country) when it comes to governing the United Kingdom.
Without the publics consent, after voting took place, David Cameron managed to negotiate with another minor political party (who I have already forgotten about) that also aligned with “stricter” immigration policies approach (which David Cameron adopted as his main political tool to get voted in power). The two “anti-immigration” political parties combined their votes (without publics permission) to form a ruling government called the “co-allition” party.
Life before David Cameron
Prior to this, the opposing (and ruling) political party was the Labour party, which was led by Tony Blair. 
Tony Blair, in my opinion understood that immigration can be used as a tool to positively stimulate the economy. He understood that economic migrants bring new skillsets and outlooks that serve to make the UK more competitive (internationally). The best skilled workforce working in one location under one economy can only yield better competitive outcomes.
Make no mistake. Controlling the gates (at the Border) has been and will always be chaotic. There are so many prospective immigrants trying to get in and finding a way to control the masses is a difficult task.
Tony Blair (previous PM) embraced this chaos and selectively chose to encourage the skilled foreign workforce to join their workforce. David Cameron (current PM), on the other hand, wants to control the gate of immigration and actually in my opinion he is looking to close the door entirely before he looks at reopening it. If he can close the door completely, it serves to show that the British have control over their borders.
To close the UK gates completely means that the British will turn most foreign nationals away. This approach, as previously mentioned is short sighted and takes little consideration for future implications. David Cameron wants control and he is dead set on achieving this.
Continuing with this perspective of past developments, the real reason for the financial downturn in hindsight was the Banks and their over lending. This was reason for the stop in cash flow.
2009 Financial Recession
The recession was in my opinon started by the financial sector (banks became greedy). They slowly lent more than they could afford to give. It was a slippery slope which eventually gave way. In time the banks became bankrupt (not being able to retrieve the money they lent out). This led to a sudden stop in cash flow (and governments needed to bail the banks out of their own created mountain of debt). This is at least my understanding of what took place.
With the sudden stop in cash flow, businesses (globally) panicked to find a seat in what seemed to be an economic game of musical chairs. When the money and the music stopped, those who stopped spending first managed to find a seat for the next round. Those caught off guard were left to step out of the economic game of keeping cash flow.
In the political arena though, during this recession, where British nationals were losing jobs, David Cameron came out with guns blazing. Stating that it was the opposition party (the Labour party) that allowed too many foreign nationals into the country (which they might have). It was as if David Cameron accused foreign nationals as the reason for the recession though, when there might be a chance that he was possibly trying to say is “when the job market is tough, foreign work force should not be able to compete for local jobs”.
This vague statement has caused confusion and hesitation in the general UK population. From this confusion, a concept of xenophobia was born.
Compare SA to the UK
I wish to address a country comparison. SA vs UK. Land size, population and GDP. This in my opinion helps understand our driving force.
We have put together an infographic (click here to view) to help visually explain this.
A summary is simply this; the United Kingdom consists of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. The total land is basically one fifth of the size of South Africa (South Africa is practically 5 times bigger than the UK).
The total population of the UK is “near” to that of South Africa. 63M as opposed to our 52M in 2012. I say “near” because when compared to that of USA, India and China who have 314M, 1 237M and 1 351M respectively, the difference of 10M doesn’t seem much.
Comparing SA versus UK economy performance, based on 2012 GDP was 382 billion USD versus the UK’s 2 615 billion USD. Meaning that the UK experienced gross output of more than 6 times SA’s outcome, we seem to have a small population size.
With the above in mind, its funny to think the our President has a large entourage of cabinet ministers to run a smaller population than the USA. Twice the ministers to run a sixth of the population.
Combining the 3 statistics, namely country size, population and GBP, one can conclude that the UK is one fifth the size of SA, with the similar population numbers (give or take 10M) and yet has a GDP of more than 6 times South Africa’s.
Same amount of opportunity, similar amount of population, smaller country and yet far greater output in production.
This stronger economy serves as one of the many driving forces for many South Africans who desire to grow their career experiences.
In closing from UK public perspective
The final conclusion of the past that I want to re-affirm is that the UK public (generally speaking) and its government are known to be sensitive to the amount of immigrants flooding into their island. Every year, those numbers increase. Putting strain on public infrastructure, internal pressure is building up and it makes it a little more difficult for locals to keep up with the pace.
This concept of “public infrastructure strain” from the perspective of general UK public justifies the need to want to slow immigration. This is the past of UK immgration that one needs to take into consideration if you want to better understand the proposed future.
Next, I take a look at the current UK immigration policies (continued from a South African perspective).
Unless you want to jump to the conclusion where the future of UK immigration will be (well my assumptions thereof) predicted – which you are more than welcome to do.