Photo by Age Cymru on Unsplash
The Home Secretary’s ‘earned settlement’ proposals — which will change the rules by which migrants living and working in the UK can qualify for permanent residency — are set to be some of the most significant reforms to UK immigration policy in a generation, with the consultation generating one of the largest responses ever. And it is no wonder given that around 1.35 million people are estimated to be affected. Many of these people and their families will now face a longer, tougher pathway to settlement if they hope to put down roots and stay permanently.
Settlement matters beyond those hoping to make the UK their home, though. It tells an important story to the wider world about who we are as a society, and what we expect of those who want to become permanent members.
The story the Home Secretary wants to tell is about contribution. She believes this is an essential condition for the UK to be a tolerant, open and generous country, and has expressed concern that the scale and pace of immigration under previous Conservative governments will mean that a large number of people who moved to the UK in recent years will soon become eligible for settlement and its associated benefits, including welfare and social housing.
Even as net migration numbers come down, it is understandable that the government wants to consider both how migration is serving our country and whether settlement policy is generating positive outcomes — especially when migration is such a contentious and divisive issue. However, the Home Secretary’s proposals risk undermining the government’s own objectives. On both integration and workers’ rights, there are major questions to be answered — and, we would argue, alternative approaches to take.
The long pathway to settlement
Under the proposed plans, existing settlement policy will be replaced with a new contribution-based model. This model will mean that most people will face a longer wait and tougher eligibility criteria to qualify for permanent residency. As it stands, the Home Office intends to apply the reforms retrospectively to people already here who are working towards being able to settle permanently, as well as those who might come to Britain in the future.
If implemented, Britain will have some of the longest pathways to settlement of any European country. Care workers and non-graduate workers should expect to wait 15 years to qualify for permanent residency, while it will take most refugees 20 years to be able to formally call the UK their home. The rationale is that by introducing different qualifying periods for different types of migrant, the government can reward those who contribute most, with the Home Office favouring the highest earners and some NHS workers who will be eligible to settle in five years or less. For children of migrant workers, this unequal treatment has major consequences: if their dad is a banker, they could be allowed to settle permanently in the UK after 3 years, but if their mum is a care worker they’ll likely have to wait 15 years.
Delaying settlement for such prolonged periods carries risks. There is strong evidence that leaving people in a state of extended ‘unsettlement’ can harm integration. If the bar for permanent residence is set too high, people have less incentive to invest in their new communities. For example, research from Denmark found that increasing the requirements for permanent residency actually reduced labour market integration among refugees, resulting in a 30% reduction in the full-time employment of refugees. Long-term precarity and instability only make migrants more vulnerable, increasing the risk that they lose their status and end up living here undocumented and operating in the shadow economy.
If, as the Home Secretary proposes, people who move to the UK on work visas have to maintain sponsored employment for much longer periods to qualify for settlement, they will also be at greater risk of labour exploitation. When a worker’s right to remain in the country depends on their employer, they are far more vulnerable to exploitation. Workers can fear that challenging poor treatment or reporting abuse will lead to them not only losing their job but also their ability to remain in the UK. This is a known problem for care workers who have come from abroad to work in our social care sector in particular, where people have reported facing debt bondage, forced labour, withheld wages and direct threats of deportation. Yet, under the Home Secretary’s proposals, these workers would be tied to a sponsoring employer for 15 years if they are to qualify to stay permanently in the UK — triple the length of time originally promised when they arrived.
Finally, such long pathways have raised doubts about whether migrants will be able to settle at all, considering the challenge of finding employers willing to sponsor an individual for such a long period of time, and to cover associated costs such as visa fees and the immigration health surcharge. Wider immigration policy compounds this: for example, many migrant workers will have to meet higher salary thresholds to renew their visas throughout the longer qualifying period. This has led some to ask whether the policy is actually intended to encourage people to leave.
An alternative approach
If the intention is indeed to place greater emphasis on how much people should contribute before they are entitled to settlement, one of the clearest ways to signal this is to lengthen the period of time an individual must ‘pay in’, before they become eligible to ‘take out’ of the welfare system. The challenge is to do this while offering people security of status and minimising prolonged periods where they are tied to a sponsoring employer.
If the government chooses to proceed with these reforms, there is an alternative approach. At The Future Governance Forum, we suggest the government introduces a new ‘interim’ settled status offered at five years. At that point, people would no longer have to be tied to an employer sponsor, but they would still be restricted from accessing public funds. This would bridge the gap to permanent settled status (or citizenship) at ten years, avoiding long periods of ‘unsettlement’ and capping the wait to ten years. Government could choose to fast-track some groups of people as planned — such as the highest earners or public sector workers — but five years to interim settlement and ten to settled status should be the maximum.
Government could introduce this as a new form of limited leave through changes to the Immigration Rules, without needing primary legislation. To prevent anyone from becoming destitute should their circumstances change while they are still restricted from accessing public funds during this longer wait, the government would need to look at the current ‘No Recourse to Public Funds’ rules, and consider putting in place a better safety net for those in greatest immediate need.
Importantly, this approach would draw a dividing line with those pushing an ethnonationalist remigration agenda. As Andy Burnham said in his Labour Party conference speech, Britain ‘will always be grateful…to those who have come here and are contributing to our country’. By offering a predictable and achievable pathway to settlement, the government can make clear that these reforms are not intended to push people out of the country, unlike the right’s race to the bottom on residency rights. Instead, they tell a story about valuing and expecting contribution — one where those who play by the rules and pitch in are welcome to make their home here. In this way, this government can demonstrate that Britain is — and perhaps more importantly, will continue to be — a successful multi-faith, multi-ethnic democracy.
