Mahmood Music

This article was first published in The Critic.

In the aftermath of the Gorton and Denton by-election — where Labour lost a seat they had held for a century to a Green party whose leaflets prominently attacked Labour’s immigration policies for being too harsh — the pressure is on Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood. Her new immigration reforms are being described as tough, a way to win back voters appalled by our open borders. But if they prove to be weaker in practice than on paper, then she risks alienating voters on every side.

She’s aware of that, arguing in The Guardian that her reforms are planned to appeal to the “broad church” that is the Labour Party, rather than pandering to the “nightmare” of Reform or the “fairytale” of the Greens. Fairness, tolerance, and a “quiet but determined patriotism” are what she is supposedly aiming for.

To that end, the Government will raise the qualifying period for Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) from a mere five years to 10, as well as imposing new conditions to qualify, like a clean criminal record, “sustained economic contribution”, and a good command of English. For those contributing more, like doctors, nurses, and higher-earners, there will be a faster route to ILR. 

Importantly, this means that those contributing less, like many of the low-skilled workers who came between 2021 and 2024 during the so-called “Boriswave”, will have to wait longer. In most cases, this should mean they fail to get ILR before their work visa runs out, meaning they will have to return home. As ILR means access to the welfare state and social housing, this will be a great fiscal saving for the taxpayer. Predictions of the cost of the taxpayer have varied, but whether it is in the high tens of billions or the hundreds of billions, the Boriswave settling in its entirety would have been a disaster.

In return, the Home Secretary wants to introduce more fairness into the immigration system by opening so-called “safe and legal routes to asylum”. These will be capped, to ensure that numbers are under control. Combined with further measures against illegal immigration, this is planned to restore order to our borders. 

That has been enough for many on the left of the Labour Party to express their anger. In a duelling article for The Guardian, MP Stella Creasy has attacked the new measures for their supposed “performative cruelty” in making refugee status temporary. She has called for the money due to be spent on reassessing refugee claims to be used for foreign aid instead.

Yet if you look closer, many of the Home Secretary’s measures seem a lot less tough than they are presented. Reducing the Graduate Visa, which has been so widely abused for illegal working that it has been jokingly renamed the “Deliveroo visa”, from two years to 18 months is hardly much of a deterrent (and it only comes into force in 2027). Similarly, tougher English standards turn out to mean requiring B2 rather than B1, a mere one level higher and still below what the CEFR considers necessary to be a “proficient user”. 

Or what about the use of visa bans on specific nationalities? Temporary bans on new study visas for students from Cameroon, Sudan, Myanmar and Afghanistan, as well as a ban on skilled worker visas for Afghanistan, have been instituted. Yet the numbers affected are still quite small, making up only 3,000 visas. Many people will probably be surprised to find out that 123 skilled worker visas were given out to Afghans at all. Countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh, whose nationals make up a much greater number of visas and who have also been plausibly accused of using dubious asylum claims to stay here, have been ignored. 

Temporary asylum is a sensible move, shifting us back to the way in which it was originally intended to be used after the Second World War. Barring those whose countries ended up behind the Iron Curtain, most postwar refugees did indeed go home. But as many of the refugees coming here today are from violent or less well developed countries, there is little chance of them being sent home, even if any conflict ends. Britain already accepts asylum seekers from countries like Sri Lanka which are at peace. 

The increase in the ILR qualification from five to 10 years also has flaws, as there are many ways to reduce the qualifying period. Reductions are available for teachers and healthcare workers. This loophole will continue to make our public services more dependent on foreign workers than they should be. Volunteering in the community would also reduce the qualifying time to seven years, so look forward to an explosion in charities of dubious impact in the next few years as migrants seek to game the system. 

It’s also unrealistic to think that illegal arrivals will be particularly put off by the possibility of having to wait 30 years for settlement. It’s comical to even admit the possibility that a migrant can expect to spend three decades here after coming illegally without being removed. 

Most illegal arrivals won’t need to do any such thing, because the new rules — including on temporary status — will only apply to those in the “core protection” track. New work and study tracks will be introduced, with asylum seekers encouraged to apply to these. Although this is supposedly intended to improve “social cohesion”, it will effectively be a way to disguise the continued permeability of our borders. Rather than staying in hotels at taxpayer cost, asylum seekers will be allowed to work and move into their own accommodation, incentivising more illegal immigration. 

The capped safe and legal routes are another potential Trojan Horse. The “new norm” is to be community sponsorship, which suggests that a great many immigrant focused groups — whether formal NGOs or religious bodies — will soon be encouraging chain migration from their home countries. Nor do domestic organisations have a good record, with the attempted Liverpool hospital bomber having been assisted to stay in Britain by worshippers at Liverpool Cathedral. 

The ultimate test of these policies will be whether legal and illegal immigration decreases. Although net migration is down, that is due to large outflows disguising large inflows. When looking at gross migration instead, over 800,000 legal migrants arrived in the year ending June 2025, with another 100,000 either arriving illegally or claiming asylum. Without major changes to human rights, such as leaving the European Convention of Human Rights, the small boats will keep coming, as shown by the arrival of 65 small boat migrants in Ramsgate whilst the Home Secretary was announcing these supposedly tough new reforms.