Indefinite leave, unlimited access

This article was first published in The Critic.

While the Prime Minister fights for his political life on the green benches and in his rare visits to the Commons tearoom, a different political battle is being waged elsewhere: one of existential importance to Britain. This is the rearguard action being fought by the Home Secretary to protect her reforms to Indefinite Leave to Remain. 

The Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, is attempting to extend the qualifying period for migrants from five to ten years. This is ostensibly about delaying or deterring the permanent settlement of the millions of people who arrived in Britain since 2021, known as the Boriswave (although some of the earliest arrivals have likely already been granted ILR). 

Many of these people are working in low-wage and low-skilled sectors. The Health and Care Visa, introduced in 2021, is a large contributor to this wave of migration, and more people came to the UK as dependents than workers off the back of it. These people have come from poorer countries like India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, and others. Research by Neil O’Brien MP has found that the average salary of migrants from India and Nigeria, for example, has collapsed since the introduction of this visa. 

This poses a huge challenge for Britain’s public finances. If granted ILR, these migrants will have complete access to the British welfare state, and their earning profile, age, and number of dependents suggests that they will likely impose a huge burden on the taxpayer. Reform UK estimate that this could cost the public purse over £600 billion throughout their lifetimes, owing to their expected use of welfare benefits, public services, and infrastructure. While these migrants are generally working age and will pay taxes, many of them are working in low skilled sectors with a low likelihood of becoming net contributors before retirement. 

While some organisations have disputed Reform UK’s calculation, the Government itself is clearly worried about the fiscal impacts of the Boriswave; so much so that it is committed to doubling the qualifying period for ILR to ten years, precisely to limit welfare access for recent migrants. The forecasts provided by Treasury officials to ministers must be sufficiently similar to those produced by Reform to have scared Mahmood and her junior minister Mike Tapp into action. 

Unsurprisingly, this has proven hugely controversial among Labour MPs. When MPs questioned ministers about this in the Commons last year, the first question from a Labour backbencher to the Government was one to ask the Government to not apply these changes to migrants already here. MP Lucy Powell claimed that the ILR changes persuaded voters in the Gorton and Denton by-election to switch from Labour to Greens, and Angela Rayner declared these immigration changes “un-British.” Quite an accusation, but not surprising when the Prime Minister himself considers diversity an integral British value. 

The campaign against these changes has been fierce. Despite being Government policy, few organisations in the wider Labour ecosystem have endorsed them, and indeed some have actively criticised them. The IPPR has briefed MPs claiming that the Government’s estimates of cost savings from refusing to grant ILR do not add up, unless of course those migrants decide to leave Britain and return home. 

Persuading migrants to return home may of course be the ultimate, unspoken aim of the policy. However, another aspect of it is has proven contentious. The IPPR has claimed that the Government’s changes would have a negative fiscal effect on the public finances, because extending ILR would keep migrant care workers working in a low wage sector instead of allowing them into the wider economy, a privilege which comes with achieving ILR. 

The trade union Unison has organised a leafleting campaign in the Home Secretary’s constituency in Birmingham against the policy. This campaign is being led by migrant carers themselves, and it argues that the consequences of changing immigration laws which would likely persuade these people to leave the country would have a grave effect on Britain’s care sector, which is apparently very dependent on overseas labour. 

The irony is that these people are campaigning for a law change which would mean they could also leave the care sector and work anywhere in the economy, rather than for the business which has sponsored their visa. So, what truly is the matter at hand here? Is ILR reform bad because it will harm the care sector by leading to immigrant carers leaving the country, or is ILR reform bad because it stops migrant carers leaving the care sector for other opportunities in the UK? The IPPR appears to be arguing the latter case, while the carers’ union is emotively making the case for the former. Both arguments, however, are committed to the continuation of large scale, low-skill, permanent migration.

While it is true that a huge number of carers have come to the UK on the Health and Care Visa – around two-thirds of visa holders in total, with the other third working in the NHS – Britain’s supposed dependence on migrant carers is a very recent thing. In 2020, nearly 85 per cent of care workers were British. It is worth examining why this has dropped to 70 per cent in such a short period of time. The public regularly overestimate how many NHS workers are born overseas, on average imagining 42 per cent when in reality is it only 21 per cent and was only 11% in 2010. Similar warped perceptions likely prevail toward carers.

British workers have the left the sector in recent years, however. Many have moved to better paying jobs elsewhere. Since the pandemic, welfare claims have exploded, with Britain now experiencing greater youth unemployment than European countries like Spain or Greece, and record numbers of people are registered as economically inactive. If the ILR reforms do not go ahead, the Boriswave will ultimately become a permanent fiscal loss to the country, which was originally intended to solve temporary labour shortages, which could have been fixed by changes to domestic labour and welfare policy. And this is to say nothing of the political and social impact of such an unprecedented influx of migrants, including the avoidable deaths of British people in care thanks to the poor English skills of carers from overseas.

This whole affair highlights the absurdity of the concept of Indefinite Leave to Remain. This policy allows people to settle permanently in Britain and to gain total access to British public services with no obligation to become British citizens or to be a net contributor. As it is indefinite, it is never reviewed. Despite voting rights, there is little difference between ILR and citizenship. Of course, migrants from Commonwealth countries – which make up a huge component of our immigrants today – have automatic voting rights, in a strange imperial hangover, meaning Britain offers a form of global citizenship to potentially billions of people. 

The Government’s ILR reforms are imperilled. Many assume they will be dead in the water if the Prime Minister or the Home Secretary are removed. That may be true. Ultimately, cutting immigration and welfare entitlements are difficult things to persuade Labour MPs to do. Regardless of whether this particular policy survives the next few months unscathed, British politicians must be brave enough to tackle the expensive anomaly that is Indefinite Leave to Remain. Migration policy must be fiscally positive for Britain, and those lucky enough to reside here committed to playing a positive role in Britain’s 2000-year-old story, with only citizenship offering an indefinite right to settle on our islands.