Tony Blair has been voted in for a historic third term as Prime Minister in the UK. Early results showed that his Labour Party will win with a sharply reduced majority in the British parliament.

As workpermit.com readers know, a key issue in this campaign was immigration. Overall, the Labour Party has a more positive attitude towards immigration, and this result will probably be welcomed by many immigrants and prospective immigrants to the UK.

Throughout the campaign, Labour faced serious charges from the other Parties that it did not have an effective immigration policy. Critics also said the Labour government was unable to deal effectively with bogus asylum seekers.

Labour took significant criticism after promising to remove 30,000 asylum seekers whose applications had failed. It became clear that the task was nearly impossible, and the Party failed to fulfill its promise.

In the end, the Labour Party sought to increase public confidence in economic migration by proposing a new points-based entry system similar to those used in other countries. There is already a points system for highly skilled people in the UK. It is expected that in future certain lower skilled non-EU foreigners will find it more difficult to settle in the UK permanently. Blair also vowed to recruit 600 more border guards with the campaign slogan, "Your country's borders are protected."

About 8 percent of Britons are born outside the country, a percentage similar to the rest of Western Europe. In the United States, the figure is 11.8 percent.