About 1.5 million foreign workers who have moved to Britain since 2020 may have to wait a further five years to apply for permanent settlement.
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Under changes set out in the immigration white paper, automatic settlement and citizenship rights will be granted after 10 years instead of five. But the paper did not specify whether this would apply to recent arrivals already in the UK and in the process of their application.
Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, will consult stakeholders on whether the changes will apply to all migrants who have arrived in the UK in the past five years, according to government sources.
If the change goes through, it would mean that 1.5 million foreign workers who would have qualified for permanent settlement as soon as this year face having to wait until they have lived in Britain for 10 years.
The Labour MP Florence Eshalomi told the House of Commons on Tuesday that she had been contacted by several of her constituents in Vauxhall and Camberwell Green, in south London, who were “worried about where this uncertainty leaves them”.
She said: One even told me that they were so worried that they were considering leaving the UK, because their settled status here is in jeopardy.”
If ministers do decide to apply the changes to arrivals from 2020, this would make government policy in the area more robust even than that sought by the Conservatives, who have suggested dating it to 2021.
A number of Labour MPs and others have expressed concern at some of the measures in the white paper and the language used by Keir Starmer to introduce it, including that recent levels of migration have caused “incalculable” damage to the country and that the UK risks becoming “an island of strangers”.
At prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, Starmer won unwelcome praise from Nigel Farage for his rhetoric on the subject. The Reform UK leader said he had “very much enjoyed” Starmer’s speech on Monday, adding: “You seem to be learning a very great deal from us.”
Liz Saville Roberts, Plaid Cymru’s Westminster group leader, accused Starmer of demonising migrants with his language. Starmer said that was “rubbish” and said: “I want to lead a country where we pull together and walk into the future as neighbours and as communities, not as strangers, and the loss of control of migration by the last government put all of that at risk, and that’s why we’re fixing the system based on principles of control, selection and fairness.”
Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, defended the prime minister while resisting an invitation to repeat his exact words, and called for the UK to become “a nation of neighbours”.
She said: “I agree with the prime minister that without curbs on migration, without making sure that we have strong rules that everyone follows, and that we have a pace of immigration that allows for integration into our country, we do risk becoming a nation of people estranged from one another.
“What he has described is something that I absolutely believe in, which are the values of the Labour party, which is a desire to see this country as a nation of neighbours.”
Separately, vice-chancellors and other higher education sector leaders have warned that proposals in the white paper on international students will worsen the financial crisis already affecting universities.
With four in 10 universities in England likely to be in deficit this summer, Jo Johnson, the former Conservative universities minister, said few were in a position to absorb the government’s proposed 6% levy on income from overseas students or pass it on in higher fees. “This risks both weakening the financial position of the sector and making it harder to compete in a global market for talent,” he said.
Shitij Kapur, the vice-chancellor and president of King’s College London, where 54% of students are from overseas, said: “The precise details of the wording and policy change matters less than how it is perceived in the 150 countries we recruit our students from. Are we still seen as a welcoming jurisdiction?”
Steve West, the vice-chancellor of UWE Bristol, speaking on behalf of University Alliance, said the international student levy was an additional tax on universities. “Taken alongside eye-watering pension costs and the national insurance hikes, [it] would add to a mounting proportion of university resources being diverted to the Treasury,” he said.
Combined with a proposed cut to the graduate post-study work visa from two years to 18 months, also outlined in the white paper, West warned of a further drop in international students. Numbers are already in decline after a clampdown by the previous government, a factor that is exacerbating the financial crisis in the sector.
In a shift in focus to unofficial migration, Starmer is to visit Albania from Thursday to discuss more ways to tackle people smugglers and the broader issue of asylum seekers arriving in the UK on small boats from France.
Albania is one of the few recent success stories in reducing numbers, with a programme to speed up the return of Albanian nationals leading a 95% fall in small boat arrivals in the UK from the country over three years.
In the first ever official visit to the country by a UK prime minister, Starmer is to hold talks in Tirana and visit the port of Durres, across the Adriatic from Italy.
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