And just like that, it was done. Britain put itself through years of political crisis, economic stagnation and social division, all to end the free movement of people within the European Union. Like a nation selling the family silver to fund a search for a lost tenner, we could finally brandish our successfully retrieved banknote while the neighbours looked on in bemusement.

But already most people will have forgotten the announcement. No mention of it remains in the dailies. New threats and worries emerge. The news cycle moves on. Anyone could be forgiven for thinking it never even mattered.

Priti Patel’s points-based immigration system is, as it stands, liable to cause havoc in sectors such as social care and hospitality. It also ends the free movement of the British ourselves: by cancelling the automatic right of EU citizens to live and work here, it means that our right to do likewise in the EU also ends. It is nevertheless likely to enjoy strong public support, particularly from leave voters. Vote Leave promised to “take back control”, and in this sense – and, chances are, this sense alone – the government is delivering. The public wanted direct controls on EU immigration, and now they’re getting them. Consequences are for losers.

The debate now veers between those who feel reducing numbers is key, and those who argue that 'control' is enough

Will this finally extinguish immigration as a public sore point? Is it even a sore point any more, given recent shifts in public opinion? And if not, why are we doing this at such cost to ourselves?

The trend line of British attitudes to immigration is not a simple one. Concerns over immigration were almost nonexistent in the 1990s but shot up in the early 2000s around hysterical coverage of the Sangatte refugee camp in France, and then rose further after the rise in migration that followed the expansion of the EU in 2004.

While the issue subsided as a voter priority in the years following the financial crisis, it never truly went away, and shot up again amid frenzied coverage of Romanian and Bulgarian immigration in 2014 and then the Syrian refugee crisis in 2014 and 2015.

The 2016 leave campaign was built on racist scaremongering over immigration – Syrian refugees, Turkish membership of the EU. Nigel Farage and Dominic Cummings both shamelessly exploited the Cologne sexual assaults to claim Britain’s EU membership meant it could happen here.

Plainly, this is not just about what political types call “lived experience”. While New Labour housed asylum-seekers in deprived areas, where they became a lightning rod for local hostility, the overall public opposition to immigration in the early 2000s cannot be divorced from the blanket media coverage of the Sangatte camp at the time.

Similarly, 2013 saw widespread coverage of the imminent lifting of restrictions on immigration from Bulgaria and Romania, with a predicted surge in migration that never came to pass. The number of people “concerned” about Syrian refugees was infinitely larger than the number of people who were ever likely to meet one. This not to say that direct experience of immigration justifies negative attitudes – it is simply to show that media coverage has a significant influence on public opinion.

Only since the referendum has public opposition to immigration softened – although even then, large numbers still support cuts to immigration. In 2011, nearly two-thirds of Britons thought immigration had been bad for the country according to one polling firm – by 2019 that had fallen to barely a quarter.

There are various reasons for this shift. Brexit may have satisfied leave voters that immigration will fall or at least be “under control” – though that doesn’t explain why more people think immigration has been good, and fewer think it’s been bad.

Instead there is evidence that media coverage of the forecast impact of post-Brexit immigration controls, including health and care staff shortages, and fruit going rotten on farms – has increased public understanding and acceptance of the role of immigration. A year ago, Ipsos Mori found most of those who had become more positive about immigration had done so because “discussions” about Brexit – presumably in the media rather than at the watercooler – had “highlighted how much immigrants contribute to the UK”.

Given that many remain voters actually wanted controls on immigration in 2016 – 55% of them in a NatCen poll that November – this shows both the impact of media coverage and the failings of the remain campaign itself in the runup to the referendum. How many column inches, we may ask, were devoted to the prospect of Turkish membership four years ago? And did pro-EU politicians really make the case for free movement, not just during the campaign itself but in the years before it?

But it also reflects that economic arguments are central to the softening of attitudes to immigration. Like most countries – white-majority or otherwise – Britain is not automatically welcoming of outsiders. It is too soon to extrapolate from this that there is a fundamental acceptance of immigration as a “good” in and of itself. Antipathy towards immigrants claiming benefits or using the NHS remains high. Future waves of migration may be met with the same wall of hostility as previous ones.

The government may find it politically easy to loosen its points-based criteria to address staff shortages in the care sector, for example – Boris Johnson has the trust of leave voters, and adult care is a frontline service facing widely documented challenges.

Should the new criteria fail to bring down immigration levels, will voters be riled, resigned or find it wholly irrelevant? The debate that followed the announcement of the new rules veered between those who feel reducing actual numbers is key, and those who argue that the concept of “control” is enough to assuage public concerns.

But what really counts will be media coverage. Say, for example, that after three years of the points-based system, immigration levels are still rising. Imagine two different scenarios. In the first, rising immigration is being blared out on the front pages of national newspapers, breathlessly debated on the BBC and going viral via the internet’s outrage-industrial complex. In the second, it isn’t – instead it’s just treated as a normal and fairly unexciting statistic. Is public opinion the same in both scenarios? Of course not.

But all this may seem quaint in years to come. Should the government’s handling of Brexit end up gutting the economy, the surge across the border may be from people heading out, not coming in.

• Chaminda Jayanetti is a journalist who covers politics and public services