Latest news with #UKpolicy
Bloomberg
3 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
UK Isn't Ruling Out Making Immigration Restrictions Retroactive
Immigration minister Seema Malhotra said it is still too soon to know whether the government's plans to make it harder for migrants to claim settlement in the UK will apply retroactively to those already in the country, potentially extending the wait for millions who arrived in the country since the pandemic. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced the UK would be tightening its immigration system. One proposal was to prevent migrants from claiming settlement — a status that allows them certain benefits and the right to work in the UK permanently — until they had lived in the country for 10 years. That's double the current period.
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
I got British citizenship via the five-year route. Labour's new 10-year rule will cause untold pain
There are many lies told by politicians when it comes to immigration in the UK, but none is bigger than the claim that it's all too easy. Too easy to enter Britain; too easy to be given handouts; too easy to acquire citizenship. The UK is presented as an inert country, passively receiving future Britons that it does not charge, test or, indeed, invite. The government's latest raft of policies to deal with the 'failed experiment' of 'open borders' is heavily influenced by this lie, as it is intended to make things harder for immigrants. One of those policies went broadly under the radar, a small technicality amid Keir Starmer's unsettling rhetoric, but it will have serious consequences. That policy is extending the period you're required to be settled in Britain before you can get permanent residency, and then citizenship, from five years to 10 years. As someone who became naturalised under the five-year route, my stomach sank when I saw the news. There is no automatic route to citizenship in the UK for foreigners, not through marriage to a British citizen or even birth on British soil to non-British parents; there has long been a residency requirement component. The 'settlement' route to citizenship is – or was – open to those who have worked and lived in the country legally for five continuous years, and their dependants. After that five years, one can apply for 'indefinite leave to remain' (ILR). After a minimum of a year on that status, one can apply for naturalisation, and then a British passport. If the government's new policies come to pass, the route to settlement will now take a minimum of 11 years, not including any time spent in Britain as a student or on other visas that don't count towards the settlement component. I know from experience that five years are already one long trial of keeping jobs against all odds and fighting sudden changes in the law. Doubling that time has ramifications that encompass everything from professional security to that supposed holy grail of immigration anxieties, 'integration'. The panic about settlement is misinformed by temporary patterns and faulty premises. After Brexit and the pandemic, the need to support struggling health and care sectors led to a short-term increase in work visas. And what counts towards immigration numbers includes category errors, such as students, as well as an underlying assumption that all those who enter on long-term visas with a potential for settlement will remain. A report from 2023 indicates that, of those on work routes in 2018, only 38% still had valid or indefinite leave to remain five years later. By this measure, not all workers and their families, not even half, are likely to remain in the UK and apply for citizenship – the punitiveness of the extension is disproportionate to the pain it will inflict. It is particularly gratuitously cruel as the 10-year limit will be applied retroactively. Those who came to the UK based on the understanding that naturalisation was an option, and made big life arrangements on that basis, now find themselves literally unsettled. Once the proposed new rules were announced, I received a flurry of correspondence and calls. 'I feel it is unfair,' Christine (not her real name), a skilled worker who was one year away from securing ILR, told me. 'Moving to a new country is not a life decision that anyone takes lightly,' she said. These are people who are keenly aware that they have no recourse to public funds and risk having to pack up and leave if they lose their jobs. Christine understood that uncertainty was part of the deal – but thought it could be weathered if she followed the rules, with the promised reward at the end of being 'accepted into British society'. Vulnerability is a point that recurred in conversations. Even for those happy in their work, the prospect of being in bondage to their employer for double the anticipated time seized them with a sense of precariousness. Workers' visas are tied to their employers. They can't just leave or look for another job, unless the new employer is willing to take on the cost and effort of sponsoring them. The new rules limit career prospects, and will expose people to the whims of bosses and employers. Every bad day at work becomes not just that, but a worry that your whole life in the UK may be over. Long-term sickness becomes not just a health calamity, but an existential one. Then there is the cost and administrative burden. Each extension or renewal of a visa can cost up to almost £2,000, in addition to the £1,035 annual NHS surcharge that migrants need to pay (on top of national insurance contributions). Over a period of 10 years, a family of four could pay almost up to £35,000 in health surcharges alone. There are other potential cascading costs. Children without ILR, for example, will enter the university system as overseas students, and may be treated as such for fees purposes. Many of these human consequences have not been thought through. We know this because one chilling aspect of the new policies is the lack of specificity beyond the headline summary. The extension comes with the caveat that some people will qualify 'sooner based on criteria yet to be decided', and that there will be a 'consultation' later this year. To anyone who has dealt with the Home Office, this working-it-out-as-you-go-along language augurs the sort of unclear process that one immigrant in the throes of challenging a Home Office error once told me was akin to 'climbing a crumbling staircase'. Above all, the rule changes show how little our politicians really care about integration. They constantly cite it as the epitome of what earns the right to be in the country and accuse immigrants of not holding up their end of the bargain. But being stuck on work visas for year after year amounts to the opposite of integration. It means you can't vote, cannot have recourse to public funds if needed, cannot fully lean in to British society and participate with a sense of safety and belonging, as you're constantly trying to minimise costs in case a change in circumstances means relocating. The policy creates a tier of second-class worker, a sort of migrant labourer welcomed for their work and paying of taxes, but shut out from the privileges enjoyed by British nationals. That's the real cost of this shortsighted and heartless change. Those who come to the country and build a life, have or bring children, become part of the fabric of society, and work continuously throughout their naturalisation time might soon be prevented for more than a decade from having a relationship with the British state that is defined by anything more than fear and anxiety. If there were ever a 'failed experiment', this is it. Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist
The Sun
22-05-2025
- Business
- The Sun
Sir Keir Starmer can either address the public's No1 concern — immigration — or pay the price at the ballot box
Numbers game SOLVING the problem of massive migration into this country isn't rocket science. Ministers can choose to allow more than a million a year to arrive — or not. 1 Letting students and low-skilled workers bring hundreds of thousands of dependants with them was the Tories' worst mistake. The party's belated crackdown on this was the main factor behind yesterday's figures showing annual migration halved in 2024. But the UK is still importing more overseas dependants who don't have a job than foreigners who do. Just 14 per cent of all non-EU migrants last year came to work. Half of social housing tenants in London are foreign-born. That's a huge bill for taxpayers. And although overall numbers are down, importing another 431,000 people in 12 months is totally unsustainable. Inevitably, there are wails from big business and Left-wing think-tanks that we need ever more migrants to fill job vacancies. Well, how about getting some of the nine million people the State pays to sit at home off cushy benefits and back into work instead? What is clear is that Sir Keir Starmer is going to have to go MUCH further than the measures on salary thresholds and skilled worker visas which he announced last week. These will only cut numbers by another 100,000 — still above the level when a fed-up public voted for Brexit. For the first time since 2016, immigration is once again the public's No1 concern. High and dry Working-class Brits are being sold short on our high streets. Once thriving, they are now awash with depressing rows of vape shops, barbers and takeaways — especially in poor towns and coastal areas. Even spending a penny is impossible as public toilets vanish. But it's no wonder the high street is in terminal decline. Struggling small business owners are mired in red tape and see their profits swallowed by punishing taxes. Meanwhile their customers are put off by sky-high parking charges and an incessant war on cars. Where's the plan to end this slow and painful death? OK, amigos FOR any Brits worried about mumbling 'grassy ar*e' instead of 'gracias' in Spain this summer, here's the only phrase you need to learn to pronounce correctly. 'Esa es MI toalla en la tumbona.' That's MY towel on the sun lounger.
The Independent
22-05-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Net migration halved last year in boost to Keir Starmer
Net migration to the UK almost halved last year to 431,000 in a boost to Sir Keir Starmer as he clamps down on immigration in a bid to fend off Nigel Farage and Reform UK. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said 948,000 people came to Britain in 2024, with 519,000 leaving. The 431,000 net migration figure is around half the 860,000 level of net migration seen a year earlier. The figures still cover the period before Labour came into power, so they do not account for the impact of measures announced by the prime minister this month to slash the number of people coming to the UK. The ONS said the sharp fall was driven by a decline in non-EU nationals coming to the UK on work and student visas. There was also an uptick in the number of people who came to the UK on student visas leaving the country following the full easing of Covid travel restrictions. Net migration climbed to a record 906,000 in the year to June 2023, and it stood at 728,000 in the year up to June 2024. With fewer work and study visas being granted by the Home Office, it is expected that the overall estimated net migration to the UK will fall. The prime minister has already promised that the government 's new immigration measures will mean net migration falls 'significantly' over the next four years. Plans unveiled last week include a ban on the recruitment of care workers from overseas, tightened access to skilled worker visas, and tougher English language requirements for spouses coming to the UK. Though Sir Keir did not set a target for how much the government wants to bring net migration down by, the Home Office estimated that the new policies could lead to a 100,000 drop in immigration per year by 2029.
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
PM's ‘fearful undertones' on immigration ‘dog whistle to voters', Yousaf warns
The UK is 'on the brink of possibly handing the keys of No 10 to Nigel Farage', former Scottish first minister Humza Yousaf claimed, as he launched a fierce attack on the Prime Minister's 'dog whistle' stance on immigration. In a speech used to announce a series of immigration reforms, Sir Keir Starmer earlier this week warned the UK risks becoming an 'island of strangers' if controls on those entering the country are not tightened. Number 10 has already rejected claims that the remarks echoed those in Enoch Powell's infamous 1968 'rivers of blood' speech. But Mr Yousaf insisted it had 'the same fearful undertones', as he argued that migrants are the people who 'keep Britain afloat'. In a piece written for LBC, the former SNP leader said: 'Starmer's invocation of 'strangers' is a modern echo – a dog whistle to voters who blame migrants for every social ill, from stretched public services to the cost-of-living crisis. 'It betrays a failure to understand, or deliberately mask, the fact that Britain's prosperity depends on migration, on openness – not building walls.' Mr Yousaf, who described himself as being the 'proud grandson of immigrants', launched the attack days after the UK Government unveiled plans that will mean those coming to Britain will have to wait 10 years to apply for settled status, instead of five. Other changes will mean a higher standard of English will be required for those seeking to come to the UK, while ministers will also end overseas recruitment for care home workers. Under the Tories, nearly one million people came to the UK from overseas between 2019 and 2023. My Labour government is taking back control of our borders. — Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) May 12, 2025 Mr Yousaf said that the Prime Minister's speech had 'underlined a lamentable truth', that 'the Labour Party has become so desperate to stem the decline in their polling, they haven't just lurched to the right, but are comfortable embracing rhetoric once confined to the hardest edges of the Conservative Party and now central to Nigel Farage's Reform Party'. Stressing the importance of immigrants to the UK, the former SNP leader that in England 'roughly 35% of doctors are non-British', adding that these people 'save lives on a daily basis'. He also noted more than 10,000 social care staff in Scotland have come from overseas, adding that 'every major sector' in the economy 'relies on migrants to plug chronic skills gaps'. As such, Mr Yousaf told the Prime Minister: 'Denigrate immigrants as 'strangers' and you undermine and repel the very people who keep Britain afloat.' With Anas Sarwar having agreed that migration must come down 'across the board', Mr Yousaf hit out at the Scottish Labour leader for having 'slavishly' fallen into line behind the Prime Minister. Mr Yousaf said: 'Under current rules, neither Sarwar's father nor my own would have been allowed into the UK to build prosperous lives, not only for their own families but for the hundreds, if not thousands, of people they have employed over the years.' The former SNP leader added: 'Sarwar's promise of standing up to Starmer and up for Scotland is rightly ridiculed, and as I suspect Anas will find out, the people of Scotland see right through it. 'He has sat silent as Starmer betrayed Waspi women, cut the Winter Fuel Allowance, slashed disability support, and now threatens our country's prosperity – all to try and pander to Reform voters.' Recalling that he had been first minister of Scotland at a time when Rishi Sunak was prime minister and Sadiq Khan was London Mayor, Mr Yousaf insisted: 'We should feel a sense of pride that in Britain at one time we had a Muslim Mayor of London, Hindu PM, and Scottish-Pakistani first minister. 'That is a blueprint for other nations on how multiculturalism has been a success, not a failure.' He praised his successor John Swinney, for his 'leadership' on such issues and for 'condemning Reform's vile rhetoric and standing firmly for inclusive values'. Mr Yousaf added: 'If only more politicians had such conviction, we would not be on the brink of possibly handing the keys of No 10 to Nigel Farage.' However a spokesperson for the Scottish Labour leader told LBC that the 'desperate attack' from Mr Yousaf 'deliberately misunderstands and misrepresents Anas Sarwar's position on a number of issues'. The spokesperson said: 'It is possible to celebrate the positive impact of immigration and diaspora communities in our society, while believing we need a managed and controlled immigration system. To pretend otherwise only helps right-wing politicians to use the issue to divide our communities. 'It is worth remembering that Humza Yousaf is a former health secretary and former first minister who helped create a social care crisis in Scotland by breaking the system, cutting budgets for councils, failing to workforce plan, and delivering chronically low pay and conditions for care workers.'
