Page 15 | Changes to immigration rules announced by Starmer

OneAmberFinch · 2025-05-12T13:27:58+00:00

Full white paper here is extensive and announces changes to all avenues of migration - basically their approach to resolving the issues of massively increased migration from 2019-2023/4. [[https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6821aec3f16c0654b19060ac/restoring-control-over-the-immigration-system-white-paper.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6821aec3f16c0654b19060ac/restoring-control-over-the-immigration-system-white-paper.pdf]] And Starmer's commentary on the BBC: [[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/ce810e3z6dkt https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/ce810e3z6dkt]] Handful of headline changes: default timeline to get ILR to go to 10 years instead of 5; abolishing new care worker visas; raising skills threshold for Skilled Workers back up to graduate level; increasing minimum grades required for student visas; various bits and pieces around English language requirements among several other policies

bombastix · 13/05/2025 08:30

Is it contentious that Reform are leading the polls? No.

The point is that if you don’t support them (after all I don’t) then you need to unpick why the UK has reached the point it has. Look at the evidence. The discussion on migration in the last 14 years was imo dishonest.

Reform aren’t the government so really they aren’t going to have a nuanced policy. They can bang the drum. Labour do need one and quickly.

This is quite interesting on Yvette Cooper who is pushing on this as Home Secretary (ignore puff piece elements re sense of humour and Chardonnay).

www.politico.eu/article/anti-farage-yvette-cooper-vs-reform-uk/

Mypinkchequebookholder · 13/05/2025 08:29

ByQuaintAzureWasp · 13/05/2025 08:22

Nobody is bothered about immigration for work purposes - why on earth have they stopped care homes recruiting from abroad? Seems like madness and will negatively affect the elderly care system.
It's the people illegally coming in on boats that people are concerned about.

It's knee jerk reaction to Reform's success.

They have to be seen to be doing something or they will soon be out on their ear'oles.

Mypinkchequebookholder · 13/05/2025 08:27

jasflowers · 13/05/2025 08:18

Yet more issues the Tories failed to address when in power.

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To be fair I think the Tories tried but came up against dodgy Human Rights Lawyers who claimed that the checks were "intrusive and distressing". Dentists refused to do them and x-raying people was deemed a health risk ( ! )

Now we have the Nationality & Borders Act 2022 w3hich makes these investigations a lot easier.

Original poster

OneAmberFinch · 13/05/2025 08:24

EasternStandard · 13/05/2025 08:19

I’ve just said in the last few posts Reform are the competition. Why are you struggling?

Look forward it’s Reform that will beat Labour.

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I think everyone in that nested quote thread agrees on that point! Certainly not without drastic change from the Tories which they're unlikely to do (deep purge of MP ranks etc)

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ByQuaintAzureWasp · 13/05/2025 08:22

Nobody is bothered about immigration for work purposes - why on earth have they stopped care homes recruiting from abroad? Seems like madness and will negatively affect the elderly care system.
It's the people illegally coming in on boats that people are concerned about.

Original poster

OneAmberFinch · 13/05/2025 08:21

bombastix · 13/05/2025 08:12

Graduate route has long term issues. And is perhaps particularly ridiculous when you consider employment levels for UK grads. If this was the US this wouldn’t be an issue.

The UK has a fantastic university sector which is genuinely world leading. Some bits are less so and need looking at and who is being admitted.

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This is just reinforcing a point I keep banging on and on about: talking in generalities about things like "universities" is pointless when there is such a huge gulf between the best and worst in the sector.

Quoting again from the linked substack. This quote is from the official government-commissioned MAC review he is reporting on:

"Approximately 10% of international postgraduate students in the UK who attended a university ranked between 1 and 200 (the highest ranked) globally went on to obtain a Graduate visa, whilst 30% of those who attended universities ranked 800+ went on to obtain a Graduate visa."

i.e. the people who went to the low-tier universities are the disproportionately ones using this route, not Cambridge nuclear physicists

And the huge influx of new student visas mentioned above is disproportionately going to low-tier universities. Quoting the substack author this time:

"it is striking how concentrated the growth of student visas has been among less prestigious universities. The share of visas for the top institutions had been going up. Since the graduate route launched it has plummeted"

Screenshot of that graph attached. The axes are a big misleading. The drop is from 50% to 30% but the axes make it look like it's to 0.

Changes to immigration rules announced by Starmer

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EasternStandard · 13/05/2025 08:19

jasflowers · 13/05/2025 08:16

Unbelievable lack of awareness.

Reform are way way ahead of the Tories.

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I’ve just said in the last few posts Reform are the competition. Why are you struggling?

Look forward it’s Reform that will beat Labour.

Feetinthegrass · 13/05/2025 08:19

This is not enough. We need a wholesale reset and pause on all immigration (with the exception of students and medical staff) so we can deal with the most almighty backlog and acute housing crisis.

We need to integrate and care for the people that are here already. We need a huge shake up and a reset. Anything else is tinkering around the edges.

jasflowers · 13/05/2025 08:18

Mypinkchequebookholder · 13/05/2025 08:15

They lie.

That's why the Home Office have to employ specialist translators to determine for example, which side of the border of country A/B they come from. This takes time and money.

Migrants also lie about their age and apparently we aren't allowed to do dental checks to determine this. Hence the ridiculous situation where you have a man with a full beard in a class full of children.

https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/news/2021/12/27/surging-illegal-boat-crossings-drive-record-spike-in-asylum-age-fraud/

Edited

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Yet more issues the Tories failed to address when in power.

jasflowers · 13/05/2025 08:16

EasternStandard · 13/05/2025 08:13

Forget what exactly? Reform is more likely to win.

You want to be stuck on 14 years too? Go ahead but it’s not that which is beating you in the polls.

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Unbelievable lack of awareness.

Reform are way way ahead of the Tories.

jasflowers · 13/05/2025 08:15

ChardonnaysBeastlyCat · 13/05/2025 07:49

Oh good, this again.

Just look at the settled status stats, I honestly can’t be bothered with posters like you who clearly have an agenda.

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So you cannot back up your figures with facts? simple truth is "no one knows how many stayed or went back, however if business is to be believed, most have gone home.

But i'm the one with an agenda... couldn't make it up!

Mypinkchequebookholder · 13/05/2025 08:15

Southwestten · 13/05/2025 07:58

Why would they risk their lives on a small overcrowded boat if they could just apply for visas.

Surely at some point they have to prove where they’re from, otherwise how can immigration officials decide whether they should be accepted as refugees?

They lie.

That's why the Home Office have to employ specialist translators to determine for example, which side of the border of country A/B they come from. This takes time and money.

Migrants also lie about their age and apparently we aren't allowed to do dental checks to determine this. Hence the ridiculous situation where you have a man with a full beard in a class full of children.

https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/news/2021/12/27/surging-illegal-boat-crossings-drive-record-spike-in-asylum-age-fraud/

bombastix · 13/05/2025 08:14

OneAmberFinch · 13/05/2025 08:09

From Neil O'Brien's substack piece on graduate visas linked above

"Regular readers will know that since the launch of the graduate visa, student visas have massively increased. It has not affected numbers from developed countries, but has been one cause of a huge expansion in numbers coming from developing countries.

"This is likely because of the opportunity to work in the UK with no minimum salary requirements is much more valuable to people from poorer countries (this is not a criticism of them, just a description of the incentives here)."

I was expecting to see that student visas were partially driven by graduate opportunities, but that jump is even bigger than I was expecting!

(edit as image is under review: screenshot of the graph of student visas in the section "The story so far". The graph shows that student visas rise dramatically when there is a post-study work visa available and fall when it's withdrawn. Since the new graduate visa came in around 2020, student visas from India rose 10x (200k vs 20k) and also rose a lot from Africa and the rest of south Asia, but stayed constant for countries like the US)

Edited

Yes this is a shit show imo which has been there a long time. Some of our university sector needs closer examination and admission requirements carefully looking at.

EasternStandard · 13/05/2025 08:13

Digdongdoo · 13/05/2025 08:10

In other words "stop talking about it, they might forget"...

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Forget what exactly? Reform is more likely to win.

You want to be stuck on 14 years too? Go ahead but it’s not that which is beating you in the polls.

bombastix · 13/05/2025 08:12

OneAmberFinch · 13/05/2025 08:06

I followed a link in the Critic article linked earlier by @bombastix (Explaining the Boriswave) and just read this very interesting substack piece on the Graduate route. This is a route that on the face of it I'm sure most people assume is very highly skilled.

There is so much in this that I'm finding it hard to choose what to quote!

Graduate route has long term issues. And is perhaps particularly ridiculous when you consider employment levels for UK grads. If this was the US this wouldn’t be an issue.

The UK has a fantastic university sector which is genuinely world leading. Some bits are less so and need looking at and who is being admitted.

Digdongdoo · 13/05/2025 08:10

EasternStandard · 13/05/2025 08:06

It’s a fixation. Time to look forward, everyone else is.

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In other words "stop talking about it, they might forget"...

Original poster

OneAmberFinch · 13/05/2025 08:09

From Neil O'Brien's substack piece on graduate visas linked above

"Regular readers will know that since the launch of the graduate visa, student visas have massively increased. It has not affected numbers from developed countries, but has been one cause of a huge expansion in numbers coming from developing countries.

"This is likely because of the opportunity to work in the UK with no minimum salary requirements is much more valuable to people from poorer countries (this is not a criticism of them, just a description of the incentives here)."

I was expecting to see that student visas were partially driven by graduate opportunities, but that jump is even bigger than I was expecting!

(edit as image is under review: screenshot of the graph of student visas in the section "The story so far". The graph shows that student visas rise dramatically when there is a post-study work visa available and fall when it's withdrawn. Since the new graduate visa came in around 2020, student visas from India rose 10x (200k vs 20k) and also rose a lot from Africa and the rest of south Asia, but stayed constant for countries like the US)

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1dayatatime · 13/05/2025 08:08

@User135644

"At least we know who they are"

www.standard.co.uk/news/london/iranian-terrorism-israeli-embassy-asylum-seeker-taxpayer-house-b1227051.html

EasternStandard · 13/05/2025 08:06

OneAmberFinch · 13/05/2025 07:55

I do have to smile when people bring up Tory immigration policy as a sort of gotcha... to people who are probably even more furious with the Tories than they are

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It’s a fixation. Time to look forward, everyone else is.

Original poster

OneAmberFinch · 13/05/2025 08:06

I followed a link in the Critic article linked earlier by @bombastix (Explaining the Boriswave) and just read this very interesting substack piece on the Graduate route. This is a route that on the face of it I'm sure most people assume is very highly skilled.

There is so much in this that I'm finding it hard to choose what to quote!

The MAC review of the graduate route

Ahead of last autumn’s appalling migration figures, Number 10 had decided that however bad the numbers were, they wouldn’t announce any policy measures in response.

https://www.neilobrien.co.uk/p/the-mac-review-of-the-graduate-route

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bombastix · 13/05/2025 08:04

The Conservatives are yesterday’s news. For reasons that are pretty clear. If you want to see their real irrelevance they put forward their own migration bill a fortnight ago which no one cares about (yes yes they are not the government).

Some of the things in this paper are fine with me (10 years not 5 big tick on that). Will it actually dramatically change migration figures? Remains to be seen. Starmer will grind this out for another four years, when the talk will still be of the net migration figure.

That said, assuming the UK continues to do trade deals, then skilled labour will be regulated that way (not including NHS). The implication is domestically there will be quite a lot of change which hasn’t been explicitly discussed yet with the public.

Mypinkchequebookholder · 13/05/2025 08:01

Digdongdoo · 13/05/2025 07:35

The alternative should be a robust plan to recruit and retain locals. But there's no sign of that is there?

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The rot set in with Tony 'Bollocks' Blair who said that everyone needed a degree, so all the Redbrick Universities started offering 'Mickey Mouse' degrees - Textiles, Media Studies, Golf Managenent, Surf Science, Football Studies.

Apprenticeships were neglected so now we have a skill shortage.

Unfortunately now that NI has gone up and all employees have to be paid the minimum wage some businesses can't afford to take on an apprentice. Add on to that setting up a workplace pension scheme and a PAYE system and it all puts a burden on employers.

Southwestten · 13/05/2025 07:58

Why would they risk their lives on a small overcrowded boat if they could just apply for visas.

Surely at some point they have to prove where they’re from, otherwise how can immigration officials decide whether they should be accepted as refugees?

Original poster

OneAmberFinch · 13/05/2025 07:55

EasternStandard · 13/05/2025 07:44

People need to look forward. A fixation on the Tories and repeating 14 years isn’t going to get Labour a win.

You’re looking at the wrong competition. It’s engrained for some but the electorate aren’t, look at the polls.

I do have to smile when people bring up Tory immigration policy as a sort of gotcha... to people who are probably even more furious with the Tories than they are

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hattie43 · 13/05/2025 07:53

Starmer can say what he wants , no one believes he’ll do anything about immigration. No mention at all about small boats and that is people’s concern .