No they didn’t.
You are confusing asylum applicants with regular immigrants who require visas to live here.. which are not granted unless they have skills the government of the day considers we are short of. Like nurses or midwifes.
You see, complex issues don’t admit simple solutions. Turns out, leaving the EU means we don’t have a ready supply of mobile labour any more. So when we don’t have enough nurses,say, the government understands we either grant visas to nurses who want to come here or we carry on with the shortage.
So apart from visas granted because, say, an English bloke marries an American and they decide to set up home here, visas are granted to people we need.
Because If they hadn’t we wouldn’t have enough nurses. Or midwifes.
Turns out saying “no immigration” isn’t the simple answer even the last Government thought it was.
