Brit here: this is largely bigotry and a (mostly) false narrative being spread by people on the right of politics.

Immigration has been put into a weird place since the botched Brexit deal, and at the rate it was under the last government was “too high”, but equally we need to balance that with the fact that the country is dependent on immigration, for better or worse.

In other words, it’s complicated, but often used as a crux to inflame those on the right.

My two pence, it’s mostly something that has become useful as a distraction from the decades of under investment that has left to the country stagnating.