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Individuals who have moved to Britain since 2020 with a potential path to permanent settlement within five years are now at risk of having to wait another half-decade under Sir Keir Starmer’s migration crackdown.
One of the pillars of the prime minister’s package of reforms, set out on Monday, is a doubling of the default period that migrants must spend living and working in the UK before they can apply to stay indefinitely.
This “settlement” status opens up eligibility for benefits and a path to citizenship, and takes five years for most migrants at present but will in future take up to 10.
Under current plans, home secretary Yvette Cooper intends for this policy to apply to people who are already in the UK, according to people briefed on her thinking — despite concerns among government officials over potential legal challenges.
Experts have also warned that the policy, which was outlined in a white paper, will not aid integration and will only boost Home Office revenue from the extended period during which migrants must pay fees.
The Home Office on Sunday told the Financial Times that the policy would not apply retrospectively to people already in the UK, since the courts would be likely to rule this illegal.
But a person close to Cooper said on Wednesday that any applications for settlement put in after the point at which the more restrictive policy came into effect would fall under the new rules “regardless of when the individual first came to the country”.
Applications for settlement are usually made at the end of the five-year period in which a migrant has been living in the UK.
The person added, however, that the Home Office had yet to confirm when the new rules would take effect, suggesting people nearing the five-year deadline soon might be spared.
Between 2020 and 2024, 605,000 people were granted settled status in the UK, including 162,000 people in the final 12 months, according to Home Office data.
The government plans to consult later this year on the detail of the new requirements, including on how migrants could qualify for a faster route to settlement on the basis of their contributions to the economy and society.
Starmer’s reforms and tough rhetoric — he warned that Britain risked becoming “an island of strangers” without action — come after Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration Reform UK party made big gains in English local elections this month.
Reform is now significantly ahead of both Labour and the Conservatives in opinion polls, on about 29 per cent.
Cooper told parliament on Monday: “We will set out further details of the earned settlement and citizenship reforms later this year, and we will consult on them.”
Immigration lawyers said they were receiving floods of queries from individuals and employers worried about what the change could mean.
Colin Yeo, a barrister and campaigner specialising in immigration law, said that while retrospective application of the policy was likely to face legal challenge, “the general rule is that the Home Office is allowed to do that”.
The outcome of challenges would depend on whether migrants coming through particular visa routes had been given explicit promises of the terms on which they would be allowed to apply for settlement at the time, he said.
This was despite it being “fundamentally unfair” that migrants who were often highly skilled, with options to work in many countries, had made an informed choice to come to the UK only to find the rules changed under them, Yeo added.
Professor Brian Bell, chair of the government’s Migration Advisory Committee, said there was no obvious benefit in extending the path to settlement for people who were already in the country and likely to remain, because it would make it harder for them to succeed in their careers.
“The advantage of settlement is to give you more power in the labour market,” he said, adding that migrants tied to their employer by the terms of their visa could not easily move to a better job or set up in business on their own.
“They [the government] haven’t made clear why they want to do this,” said Madeleine Sumption, head of Oxford university’s Migration Observatory, noting clear evidence that winning permanent status and citizenship made migrants better able to integrate and increase their earnings.
Migrants who wait for longer to win settlement under the new policy will, however, pay immigration fees and charges for longer — potentially running into tens of thousands of pounds for a family. “The main impact [of the policy change] is the money,” Sumption said.
