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Innledning
Great Britain has since the second World War been a hub for immigrants from all around the world, and since then the island has achieved a society of many people from many backgrounds.

However, the British people’s view on immigration has changed drastically over the years. After the divisive and splitting decision to leave the EU the country has experienced a reduction in the influx of immigrants, along with the consequences that follow.

The Brexit campaign was a huge movement aspiring to get Britain out of the European Union, causing heated discussions both within the country and within the EU itself.

The arguments they put forth under this big debate ranged from economics, to knickers, to cake, and to immigration. But what role did immigration play in this push to get the UK out of the Union?

Utdrag
UKIP has a historic reputation for being dogmatically opposed to immigration, along with accusation of racism and being blindly nationalistic.

This was not absent during the Brexit campaign, and plenty of anti-immigration sentiment was built up in the time leading up to the referendum (Mustad, 2019).

The UKIP side of the leave campaign appealed more to working people who had lost their jobs during the 2008 economic crisis, which riled up a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment among those groups.

The other side of the leave campaign was largely made up of EU-sceptic conservatives led by Boris Johnson.

This side of the campaign used more economic rhetoric, such as Johnson’s alleged lie about the UK paying £350-400 million pounds to the EU every week (BBC News, 2019).

These two sides of the campaign worked separately to gain different voters. Rhetoric regarding immigrants, and especially EU migrants played a large part in appealing to the UKIP voters, who had grown exponentially over a short amount of time.

The party received 12,6% of the vote in the 2015 general election, making it the third biggest party in the country.

The arguments used against immigration of low skilled workers from the EU were that they took up available jobs that British citizens could have, and that they created overflow in the NHS.

On top of this was the argument that because of the refugee crisis going on at the time, the EU was making the UK take in – what was in their view – too many refugees.