Individuals entering the UK unlawfully and subsequently relying on successful human rights claims to avoid deportation will face a prolonged wait of 30 years before they can attain permanent residency.
In addition, new regulations will mandate that foreign nationals working in low-skilled positions and receiving state benefits may have to wait up to 25 years to obtain ‘indefinite leave to remain’ (ILR).
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has unveiled a series of planned alterations to the ILR process, which include significant retrospective changes affecting nearly two million migrants who have arrived in the UK since 2021.
Irregular migrants, such as those entering via small boats or overstaying visas, who manage to evade deportation will face specific penalties.
The Home Office has released a consultation document indicating that they propose extending the qualifying period for settlement, particularly for those who initially entered the UK illegally or as visitors.
According to the proposal, this could mean that someone who entered the country unlawfully might face a settlement pathway extending up to 30 years.
Sources said this penalty would apply to failed asylum seekers who made a successful legal challenge under the ‘right to family life’ Article 8 provisions in the European Convention on Human Rights, for example.
Most migrants currently qualify for ILR after spending five years legally in the UK, but the new baseline will double to ten years.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood set out sweeping proposals to reform legal migration routes in the House of Commons on Thursday
Migrant workers doing lower-skilled jobs, such as care assistants, would have to wait 15 years for ILR, also known as ‘settled status’.
The 15 year wait would apply to migrants doing jobs which require qualifications lower than a bachelor’s degree.
In addition, further time penalties would be imposed on foreign nationals who claim benefits in this country.
Those who claimed welfare support here for less than a year would have to wait an extra five years to become eligible for ILR.
Anyone claiming benefits for more than a year would suffer a ten-year penalty.
It means that lower-skilled workers who have come to Britain in the last five years – and have claimed state hand-outs for 12 months or more – would be forced to wait up to 25 years to secure ILR.
For higher-qualified foreign workers the standard time period would be 10 years.
The package will also impose requirements for all applicants to have a clean criminal record, to have paid National Insurance for at least three years, not owe the Government money for visa fees or NHS costs, and speak A-level equivalent English.
The Home Office claimed it is the ‘biggest shake-up of the legal migration system in nearly half a century’
Ms Mahmood’s consultation paper on reforming legal migration said: ‘Migrants on lower wages who bring non-working dependants and children are likely to present significant fiscal costs to the UK.
‘It is therefore right that we apply more stringent controls for this group before they qualify for settled status.
‘Under our current rules, they will usually qualify for benefits payments and council housing five years after arrival.
‘As the majority of this group began arriving from 2022 onwards, this is currently set to begin in 2027.
‘We consult here on a separate baseline qualifying period, of 15 years, for this group.’
By contrast, public workers and high-rate taxpayers will secure significant discounts in the waiting times for ILR.
Doctors and nurses working in the NHS will be able to settle after five years.
Those paying the higher 40 per cent income tax rate will get five years knocked off their qualification period, bringing it down to five years.
And workers paying the ‘additional’ 45 per cent tax rate will get a seven year discount, lowering the period to three years.
The Home Office claimed it is the ‘biggest shake-up of the legal migration system in nearly half a century’.
The details emerged two months after the Home Secretary first floated the reforms at Labour party conference in Liverpool.
Ms Mahmood said today: ‘Migration will always be a vital part of Britain’s story.
‘But the scale of arrivals in recent years has been unprecedented.
‘To settle in this country forever is not a right, but a privilege.
‘And it must be earned.
‘I am replacing a broken immigration system with one that prioritises contribution, integration and respect for the British sense of fair play.’
She told MPs that British patriotism ‘finds room for those who trace their roots back many generations and those who, like me, do not’.
But she went on: ‘I worry that this broad patriotism is, for some, narrowing, and that a vision of a greater Britain is giving way of that of a littler England, as anger turns to hate.
‘Some will choose to scorn this analysis.
‘They would rather we simply wished it away.
‘But those who look like me do not have that luxury.
‘Our lives, and those of our families, are more dangerous in a country that turns inwards.’
Earlier this week – as she launched a separate set of reforms aimed at shaking up the asylum system – Ms Mahmood shocked the Commons by describing how she is ‘regularly’ subjected to vile racial abuse in the street, and told to ‘go back home’.
Accused by Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Max Wilkinson of ‘stoking division’ with her plan, she said: ‘I wish I had the privilege of walking around this country and not seeing the division that the issue of migration and asylum is creating.
‘Unlike him, unfortunately I am the one who is regularly called a f****** P*** and told to go back home.
‘I know through my own experience and the experience of my constituents just how divisive asylum has become in our country.’
In her speech to Labour delegates in September, Ms Mahmood warned that migration levels must be addressed to avoid driving Britons who feel the country is ‘spinning out of control’ towards more extreme politics.
She told the conference that working class communities – her party’s traditional heartland – will turn away from Labour and ‘seek solace in the false promises of Nigel Farage’ if the Government failed to act on concerns over immigration.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said: ‘The idea of a ten-year route to ILR is something that we proposed in amendments to the Government’s Bill, I think, around about nine months ago.
‘The Labour Party inexplicably voted against those measures and now they’ve adopted them.
‘I am delighted to see the Home Secretary has got out the copy-and-paste function on her laptop and started copying and pasting Conservative policies.’
Chief executive of charity Work Rights Centre, Dora-Olivia Vicol, described the extended waiting times as ‘callous’ and a ‘betrayal’ of migrant communities.
The proposed penalties imposed on migrants who claim benefits were ‘particularly dystopian’, she added.
The Home Office’s new plan will not apply to EU nationals who already enjoy settled status in the UK under the post-Brexit deal.
Nor will it apply to family members of UK citizens or those who have come here under special arrangements which exist for Hong Kong residents.
