End of Free Movement
Before Brexit, the UK effectively operated two immigration systems.
EU citizens could generally live and work in the UK under free movement rights derived from European law. Employers could recruit workers from across the European Union without sponsor licences, immigration permission or ongoing Home Office compliance obligations.
Non-EU nationals, meanwhile, remained subject to the UK’s domestic immigration rules.
That position changed on 31 December 2020 when free movement formally ended.
From that point onwards, European nationals seeking to move to the UK for work, study or family reasons generally became subject to the same immigration framework as applicants from the rest of the world. In practical terms, one of the largest sources of migration into the UK moved from a system based on treaty rights to one based on immigration permission.
EU Settlement Scheme
Ending free movement addressed future arrivals. A separate question concerned the millions of EU citizens already living lawfully in the UK.
The government’s answer was the EU Settlement Scheme, introduced to preserve residence rights for eligible EU, EEA and Swiss citizens and their family members.
The scale of the scheme reflected the extent to which free movement had shaped modern Britain. More than six million applications were submitted, making it one of the largest immigration registration exercises undertaken anywhere in Europe.
The scheme remains a significant part of the Brexit immigration legacy. Years after free movement ended, litigation and policy changes continue to arise around status rights, late applications and proof of lawful residence.
Constitutional Framework
Brexit changed more than the rules themselves. It changed who writes them.
Before 2020, any government seeking to alter free movement faced legal constraints arising from EU membership. Those constraints disappeared once free movement ended.
As a result, immigration policy has become increasingly shaped by domestic political and economic priorities. Governments have expanded migration routes where labour shortages emerged, tightened requirements when migration levels became politically contentious and repeatedly revised sponsorship, settlement and family migration rules.
Immigration policy now changes more frequently, responds more directly to domestic pressures and occupies a far more prominent position in UK political debate than it did a decade ago.
The next question is how governments used those new powers. That story begins with the expansion of employer sponsorship and the development of a labour migration system that looks very different from the one that existed before Brexit.
Sponsorship and Economic Migration
One of the less appreciated consequences of Brexit is that it did not produce a smaller immigration system. It produced a different one.
Before free movement ended, many employers could recruit from across Europe without engaging with immigration law at all. Sponsorship was largely associated with specialist roles and non-EU recruitment. For large parts of the economy, immigration policy operated in the background.
That changed after 2020.
As access to European labour became subject to immigration control, sponsorship moved from the margins of the system to its centre. Employers increasingly became the mechanism through which economic migration was managed, monitored and regulated.
Sponsorship Became Mainstream
The introduction of the Skilled Worker route marked a significant departure from the pre-Brexit model.
Businesses that had previously recruited freely from across the European Union now faced a choice. Recruit from the domestic labour market or become licensed sponsors.
Sponsor licence applications increased sharply across sectors that had historically relied on European workers, including social care, hospitality, logistics, food production and construction. Sponsorship ceased to be a niche immigration process used primarily by multinational businesses and became a mainstream workforce planning tool.
That shift altered the relationship between employers and immigration law. Recruitment decisions increasingly carried compliance obligations, reporting duties and record-keeping requirements that simply did not exist under free movement.
Labour Market Regulation
Brexit allowed governments to determine more directly who could enter the labour market and the conditions attached to that access.
Salary thresholds, skill requirements, sponsorship duties and visa conditions became increasingly important features of labour migration policy. Ministers could expand eligibility during periods of labour shortage and tighten requirements when political pressure mounted to reduce migration levels.
The result was a system capable of responding more quickly to economic conditions than free movement had allowed.
That flexibility became particularly visible after the pandemic. Faced with acute recruitment pressures, governments expanded work routes and facilitated overseas recruitment in sectors struggling to fill vacancies.
When net migration subsequently reached record levels, restrictions followed.
The system became more interventionist, more targeted and considerably more complex than the one it replaced.
Workforce Policy Impact
Perhaps the most striking development of the post-Brexit period has been the growing connection between immigration policy and workforce planning.
Successive governments increasingly used immigration rules to influence employer behaviour, encourage domestic recruitment, shape training investment and address sector-specific labour shortages.
Social care provides a clear example. International recruitment was actively facilitated when staffing pressures became acute. A few years later, the same sector became the focus of heightened compliance activity, sponsorship restrictions and concerns about labour market dependency.
Similar patterns emerged across other parts of the economy. Immigration policy became less focused on broad questions of admission and more focused on where workers were needed, how they were recruited and the economic objectives government wanted the system to support.
Ten years after the referendum, sponsorship has become one of the defining features of the UK’s immigration framework. The practical effect is that migration policy now reaches far more deeply into everyday business operations than it did before Brexit, affecting recruitment, compliance, workforce planning and long-term labour market strategy.
The question that follows is whether those changes achieved one of the objectives most commonly associated with Brexit: lower levels of migration. The answer is more complicated than many anticipated in 2016.
Immigration Control and Record Migration
If immigration was one of the central issues of the Brexit referendum, migration numbers inevitably became one of the main measures by which many people judged its success.
For years before the vote, public debate frequently linked Brexit with lower immigration. Regaining control over the system and reducing overall migration were often discussed as if they were the same objective.
The years that followed showed those objectives were not necessarily the same thing.
Brexit allowed governments to redesign immigration policy in ways that were not previously possible. It did not guarantee any particular migration outcome.
Migration Levels After Brexit
Once free movement ended, the key question was never whether employers would continue recruiting overseas workers. The more significant question was where those workers would come from and under what immigration routes.
Net migration initially fell during the pandemic, reflecting global travel restrictions and wider economic disruption. Once those conditions eased, numbers rose sharply.
By the early 2020s, the UK was recording the highest levels of net migration in its history.
Several factors drove that increase. Employers recruited internationally to address labour shortages. Universities continued to attract large numbers of overseas students. Humanitarian routes were introduced in response to events in Ukraine and Hong Kong. Family migration also remained a significant component of overall arrivals.
The composition of migration changed substantially. The overall volume proved far more resilient than many expected.
Different People, Different Routes
Brexit altered where migration came from rather than bringing large-scale migration to an end.
European migration declined following the end of free movement, particularly in sectors that had traditionally relied on workers from the EU. At the same time, migration from Asia, Africa and other regions increased through work, study and family routes.
In effect, the UK’s migration model became more global.
That change reflected the logic of the post-Brexit system. Once European nationals became subject to the same immigration framework as everyone else, employers and educational institutions increasingly recruited from a much wider range of countries.
The result was a significant reshaping of migration patterns without an equivalent reduction in overall demand.
Control v Numbers
Perhaps the clearest lesson from the past decade is that immigration control and migration levels are separate questions.
Brexit unquestionably expanded the government’s ability to determine immigration policy. Ministers gained powers to create routes, close routes, raise salary thresholds, restrict dependants and redesign settlement requirements without reference to European free movement rules.
Successive governments have exercised those powers extensively.
Yet migration levels have continued to reflect economic conditions, labour market demand, international events, higher education policy and demographic pressures alongside immigration controls themselves.
That tension has shaped much of the political debate since 2016. Governments acquired greater control over the system than at any point in recent decades, while at the same time presiding over historically high migration levels.
Much of the immigration policy seen during the second half of the decade can be understood through that lens. The focus increasingly shifted from creating new routes to tightening existing ones, raising barriers to entry and attempting to reconcile economic demand with political pressure for lower migration.
The debate, in other words, did not end with Brexit. It simply entered a new phase.
The Politics of Immigration After Brexit
Immigration has long been politically significant, but Brexit elevated it to a different level.
Successive governments found themselves under pressure not only to manage migration but to demonstrate that they were actively doing so. Immigration announcements became a recurring feature of political debate, leadership campaigns and election manifestos.
Policy changes became more frequent. Salary thresholds were raised, dependant rights were restricted, sponsorship requirements were revised and settlement rules became the subject of growing political attention.
Few areas of public policy experienced the same level of sustained political intervention during the decade following the referendum.
Debate Expanded Beyond Borders
Another notable development was the way immigration became linked to a wider range of domestic policy issues.
Questions about migration increasingly became discussions about housing, public services, infrastructure, workforce shortages, skills policy and economic growth.
The NHS, social care sector and higher education sector all became central parts of the conversation. Immigration policy was no longer discussed solely as a border issue. It became closely connected to how the economy functions and how public services are delivered.
Immigration became increasingly tied to wider debates about national priorities. Questions that once sat largely within immigration policy migrated into discussions about economic growth, public spending, housing supply and labour market planning.
From Immigration Policy To Immigration Management
Perhaps the most significant political shift has been the growing emphasis on management rather than admission.
Recent years have seen increasing attention paid to sponsorship compliance, illegal working enforcement, right to work checks, digital status systems and immigration monitoring.
Attention moved towards how the immigration system operates in practice, including compliance, enforcement, digital status and ongoing monitoring obligations.
The introduction of eVisas, expanded sponsor duties and increased compliance activity illustrate that trend. Immigration policy today reaches far more deeply into employers, educational institutions and public administration than it did before Brexit.
Ten years after the referendum, immigration remains one of the most politically sensitive issues in British public life. The arguments have changed, the legal framework has changed and the migration routes have changed. The intensity of the debate has not.
Brexit 10 Years on: Immigration Legacy
A decade after the referendum, Brexit’s impact on immigration is easier to identify than it is to categorise.
Attention increasingly shifted towards how the immigration system operates in practice, including compliance, enforcement, digital status and ongoing monitoring obligations.
Other questions remain contested.
Migration levels, labour market dependence on overseas workers and the role immigration should play in supporting economic growth continue to generate political disagreement. Those debates are unlikely to disappear because they are rooted in broader questions about demographics, public services, productivity and workforce demand.
A New System
Comparing the immigration system of 2026 with that of 2016 reveals the scale of change.
Free movement has been replaced by immigration permission. Physical immigration documents are being replaced by digital status. Sponsorship has expanded across sectors that previously recruited freely from Europe. Compliance obligations affecting employers have increased substantially.
Much of the infrastructure that now underpins UK immigration policy did not exist, or existed only on a much smaller scale, at the time of the referendum.
In legal and operational terms, the UK runs a fundamentally different immigration system from the one voters were considering ten years ago.
Evolution of Issues
The questions dominating immigration discussions today are not necessarily the same as those that dominated the referendum campaign.
Arguments about free movement have largely been replaced by discussions about sponsorship, settlement, workforce shortages, housing pressures, public services and the economic consequences of migration.
The focus has also shifted towards implementation. Questions about compliance, enforcement, labour market regulation and the practical operation of the immigration system now occupy a much larger part of the debate than they did before Brexit.
Once free movement ended, attention inevitably turned from questions of control to questions of outcomes.
Next Phase
The past decade was largely defined by transition.
Governments dismantled free movement, introduced a new immigration framework and repeatedly adjusted the system in response to changing economic and political pressures.
The next phase is likely to focus less on replacing old structures and more on refining the ones that now exist. Questions surrounding settlement, workforce planning, skills shortages, compliance enforcement and the long-term role of migration in the economy are already shaping policy discussions.
Ten years on from the referendum, Brexit’s immigration legacy is no longer a matter of prediction. The legal framework has been rebuilt, the migration system has been redesigned and the relationship between employers and immigration control has been transformed.
The debate that drove the referendum, however, remains remarkably familiar. The central question is no longer who controls immigration policy. It is what the UK wants that policy to achieve.
DMS Perspective
In the context of business immigration, the decade following Brexit has, frankly, resembled a policy see-saw.
Brexit afforded UK governments extensive powers to redesign the immigration system and they exercised those powers repeatedly: rules have been tightened, routes expanded, thresholds raised and restrictions introduced, often with little notice and within relatively short periods of one another. Yet labour shortages, skills gaps, demographic pressures and international competition for talent have continued to exert pressure in the opposite direction.
The result has been a period of continual adjustment, creating uncertainty for employers and sponsored workers alike.
Looking beyond the political debates and successive rule changes, the same tensions remain visible today as they were in 2016: economic demand for workers on one side and political pressure for lower migration on the other. Frustratingly, there is little indication that balancing those competing objectives will become any easier in the years ahead.
