The United Kingdom has drastically reduced its budget for financing migrant integration over the past nine years, placing the responsibility for integration into society entirely on the migrants themselves, as revealed in a report by the Institute for Public Policy Research.
A recent study by the London-based Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) revealed that the UK government has made dramatic cuts to financing the main strategies to facilitate migrant and refugee integration.
As reported by the NGO network European Council on Refugees and Exiles, the IPPR study showed that the budget for English teaching dropped by almost two-thirds between 2009 and 2017, while funding for integration efforts aimed at local authorities with high levels of migration, dropped by almost a third in the same time frame.
Government initiatives criticised
The government's integration efforts were already met with criticism this year, when in March the government published its Integrated Communities Strategy Green Paper. Refugee support charities like Refugee Action and Migrant Rights Network argued that the strategy focused disproportionately on language ability, reducing integration to a one-way process with the entire onus on refugees and migrants.
'Reform integration budget'
IPPR's research has been published at a time when the Home Office's migration policies are receiving heavy scrutiny. In recent days, judges and lawyers accused officials of making the visa system so complicated that it has become "something of a disgrace".
British daily The Guardian published an extensive analysis condemning Theresa May's strategy to ensure that Britain became a "hostile environment for illegal migration". IPPR has recommended a series of reforms to the current integration budget, calling on ministers to increase spending on integration by 15 million pounds a year and to restore support for local authorities to the pre-2010 level, the funding for which it proposes should come from visa and citizenship fees.
"Too many migrants struggle to find their feet quickly, becoming locked into low-paid employment or working at well below their skills level. Unlocking migrants' contribution is also essential to ensuring that UK residents feel they benefit from immigration," said Phoebe Griffith, IPPR associate director for immigration and integration.