I'm the sort of highly skilled non-EU immigrant the UK is now courting. But after witnessing the fallout from the referendum, I don't want to stay

'Liberal' Brexiteers have fully backed the Home Office’s hostile environment strategy, making Britain less hospitable towards immigrants, and much more isolated in the process

Among the many breeds of Brexiteer, perhaps none is odder than the “liberal” Brexiteer. This subtype insists that Brexit, far from being an atavistic vote by reactionary xenophobes, is actually the fulfilment of the British liberal tradition. Though a relatively rare type, they allow the cause of so much xenophobia to have a respectable patina. Their views constrain the horizons of young British and would-be British people like myself, tilting the country towards dimmer horizons rather than the sunlit uplands for which these Brexiters campaigned.

One of the most prominent supporters of liberal Brexit is Michael Gove. Throughout the campaign, he said that the end of free movement with Europe would lead to more immigration from the rest of the Commonwealth. At one point he even resorted to calling the current system of the free movement of people from Europe racist, because it privileges Europeans who, on the whole, are white.

Of course, this ignores the fact that allowing in EU migrants does not preclude the possibility of allowing in non-EU migrants, or the fact that there are many whites outside Europe and BAME people within it. Yet, sadly, it seems that Gove’s argument resonated with some minority voters, given that such diverse towns as Bradford, Slough, and Luton all voted to leave, partially due to the promises of easier immigration from the Commonwealth if fewer immigrants came from the EU.

Given the prominence of liberal Brexiteers in the cabinet, you would have expected there to be a shift of immigration policy towards easing restrictions against non-EU immigrants. In addition to Gove, liberal Brexiteers in the cabinet include Dominic Raab, Nadhim Zahawi, and James Cleverly. These men are amongst the shining lights of the current Conservative Party; yet as far as anyone can tell, their support for non-EU immigration is pure fluff.

Since Brexit, not one of these, nor any of the other liberal Brexiteers, have lifted a finger trying to back a system which would ease immigration from outside the EU. Instead, they have fully backed the Home Office’s hostile environment strategy, making this country less hospitable towards immigrants.

I should know that these liberal Brexiteers have done nothing to make life easier for people from outside the EU wanting to immigrate to this country, or for those who are already here, given that I am myself a non-EU immigrant. I was raised in the United States and have dual US and Colombian citizenship, but I’ve been an Anglophile for as long as I can remember and am currently studying biology at the University of Oxford. I would like to stay in the UK after I graduate, to add to the UK economy, and to perhaps, one day, raise a family in the UK. Yet, the Home Office seems determined to prevent me, and many others like me, from doing this.

The barriers are many, from the maze of Home Office bureaucracy to the high costs of getting visas to remain in the UK that can run in the hundreds of pounds. I am in the fortunate position of being able to navigate these hurdles, but many others, more deserving (and perhaps more helpful to the UK economy) than myself, cannot. Many, like me, come to the United Kingdom to study at some of the greatest universities on earth, only to find it so difficult to remain after graduation, that returning to the old country is the only available option.

This seems to fly in the face of not just the liberal Brexiteers’ purported ideology, but also the national interest. Yet, the xenophobic environment fostered by Brexit ensures that this attitude towards immigration remains entrenched in British policy. I dearly hope that the status quo will not endure, and I encourage young people living in Great Britain to support the Independent’s campaign for a Final Say on the Brexit deal. A vote on the deal would heal much of the divisions liberal Brexiteers have widened, but more work would have to be done in British political discourse.

I do not know whether liberal Brexiteers who propose a more global Britain are deluded or hypocritical, but I do know that they cannot be right. Brexit has and will continue to make the UK smaller. It has made the already toxic debate around immigration more toxic, and has created an artificial rivalry between EU and non-EU migrants.

The problems created by Brexit regarding immigration will not be solved by exposing the liberal Brexiteer fantasies of global Britain for what they are, but at least doing so will remove the excuses some liberals have used to back Brexit. Hopefully, it will let them see Brexit for what it really is; an illiberal reaction to modernity, which makes Britain more isolated, not more global.

Daniel Villar is a student at the University of Oxford, studying biological sciences. He is an Our Future, Our Choice supporter and is active in campus politics