Sir Keir Starmer’s plans to double the time foreigners must wait to qualify for permanent settlement could increase Britain’s illegal migrant population, experts have warned. Immigration reforms announced last month will double the time foreign citizens must wait before they can settle in the UK and apply for British citizenship to ten years.
Plans to apply the ten-year wait on settlement rights will apply to 1.2 million migrant workers, 183,000 Hongkongers and 160,000 refugees who were on a route to settlement at the end of last year, an analysis by the IPPR think tank has found. Gaining indefinite leave to remain grants foreign citizens the right to live, work and study in the UK without restriction and ends the need to pay visa fees and annual payments of more than £1,000 to access the NHS. It also removes the bar on accessing mainstream benefits.
This “gives people a secure foundation to put down roots, integrate into their communities and pursue longterm career goals for instance by allowing them to move into new jobs without needing to reapply for a visa,” according to the paper by the IPPR’s Marley Morris and Lucy Mort.
They warned: “Lengthening the route to settlement risks holding up migrant integration and significantly expanding the group of people in the UK with insecure status.”
They said extending the wait to secure permanent settlement would place pressures on household budgets, making it harder to find stable work and prevent people from feeling “properly settled”.
Morris and Mort urged the government to provide clarity on who would be affected by the changes.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper wanted to apply Sir Keir’s changes to all migrants who arrived in the UK in the past five years because of concerns that the record levels of immigration since the post-Brexit immigration system came into effect in 2020 would lead to hundreds of thousands of extra people being granted permanent settlement.
They will now wait another five years – ten in total – to apply for indefinite leave to remain.
Once an individual has been granted indefinite leave to remain, they can apply for British citizenship.
The IPPR warned that this would be detrimental to efforts to integrate migrants and would risk increasing the number of illegal migrants in the UK.
Grants of British citizenship hit a record high of 269,621 last year while 172,798 were given permanent settlement, the highest level in 13 years.
There are no official figures on the size of Britain’s illegal migrant population but unofficial estimates range from 700,000 to 1.2 million.