Obviously the priority is /meant/ to be sensibly arrived at. The rest was commentary on how sensible it is likely to actually be in practice, with a nod to your assertions about it which seem at least plausible. I simply don't believe decisions are entirely independent. I strongly doubt the public servants making those decisions have it in the power to increase the rate of immigration tenfold based on individuals meeting criteria without political support. The process is inherently a rate limiting thing.

>Why? Who is "you" here?

"You" is anyone putting themselves in the shoes of coming up with an immigration policy. Spare a thought for any decent human being who actually has to get their hands properly dirty and do it. I may not be a decent human because I think I would run from that opportunity without hesitation. I doubt I have the psychological strength to try for a least worse policy that will bring about misery. There is no stroke of my pen where I wouldn't be seeing millions of people dying any one of whom I could have saved with a different stroke. I'm not sure I can live with that. But I can't really absolve myself of the responsibility for what happens as a voting eligible person in a democracy. On that basis I have to at least consider what current policies are and competing ones that might be somehow a little less horrific. They will all be horrific on a personal level in people's lives. A large number of people.

There are 700 million people on this planet who do not have access to safe drinking water. One would think all of them would happily relocate to any wealthy country where their children have a better chance of a reasonable future. The number who would want to relocate to the UK is probably considerably north of that number as you don't have to be on the lowest rung on the ladder of this planet to see the wealth of the UK and think that's worth moving to. There are people with clean drinking water who are utterly desperate. Have any immigration policy at all - imagine your decree is law and implemented with resources and vigor. If the one decided on involves a scale of migration measured in hundreds of millions in a year societal collapse seems very likely. If one accepts that then one embraces the necessity of rejecting worthy people with heartbreaking stories. By the million.

Who to reject? How many to reject? There is no good answer in my opinion. What is your estimate of the number of people on the planet who will die if you reject them? Know they are being rejected. A tiny fraction of utterly desperate people on this planet will be accepted as immigrants in all the rich countries combined.

I say /nothing/ about Afghanistan and refugees. I say literally nothing because I don't know about it. I point out if the immigration policy arrived at is to take everyone from Afghanistan who wants to move and that policy works (hurrah!) and has manageable costs (again hurrah! and again I have no clue), it's not the end of it. There are literally hundreds of millions more people in dire straits for whom moving their family to any rich country would save them. It's f&^king horrible. Every bit as horrible as scenes being televised. This is not an argument I'm making for rejecting any refugees from any country including Afghanistan. As soon as anyone with any kind of heart starts looking at a rich countries immigration policy and its results it is heartbreaking and horrible with no good answers, only ones you hate and loathe slightly less than others. Again this is not an excuse for being as evil as possible or eschewing all compassion or anything of the sort.

"No more horrific than necessary" is a reasonable goal because immigration policy, any policy, whatever it is, will be horrific. It sucks.