Reform plans to scrap indefinite leave to remain for migrants

It’s laughable, isn’t it, people comparing people working in Dubai to those working in the UK? 🤨🫣🤦🏻‍♀️

The arrangements are completely different. In Dubai they don’t want people to integrate, immigrants live in totally separate compounds, are subject to different law enforcement (all the things people believe happen here in the UK but don’t yet in Dubai are actually the case), and immigrants in Dubai also pay no tax so contribute nothing but their needed skills to the country. The quid pro quo for this obviously is that there is no citizenship/ ILR because they are not moving there permanently as part of that society!

Utterly ridiculous to compare that to someone relocating permanently in the UK (or any other western country), marrying a UK citizen and raising a family of UK children, paying UK tax for decades and being an integrated part of our society in the UK.

I can see which poster made this crazy comparison and I’m not surprised! 😆 How low things have sunk for it even to be suggested that Dubai should be our comparator for our country’s legal, immigration, social, welfare and tax systems and for this to be touted as an alleged justification for the insane policies proposed by Reform.

While I’m pontificating - back to a comment earlier about the cost of applications and Britons generally being comfortably unaware of how immigration actually works. If had a quid for every time someone - right or left aligned - told me they thought DH had just been given a British passport when we got married, we’d have a nice little pot saved up for his naturalisation just from that alone.

So I realise it’s unpopular, but I do think asylum seekers are a different case altogether and rightly so. If someone is granted asylum, they are their famiiies have been judged to be at risk of persecution. Ask any Brit how relaxed they are about their nieces, siblings, etc being tortured to get at them - I very much doubt they would think it reasonable.

Very few asylum applications are granted, but we keep people here in limbo for years appealing and re-applying. That’s where the people-in-hotels problem is, not the comparatively small number of people who even our sceptical Home Office agrees should be granted asylum.

As for that Afghan - was it one of the MOD interpreters, by any chance?

I think the main question Mr Toad should be answering currently about his personal life is why he announced on GB news that he “had just exchanged contracts to buy himself a house in his constituency”, and yet he now claims that this house has nothing to do with him and he had no involvement in its purchase.

His French girlfriend - whom he stated had come to stay with him because she had nowhere to live and couldn’t afford a hotel room at the time they got together, and whose French family went bankrupt - apparently purchased this house for cash with no mortgage, at a cost of the best part of £1m.

Mr Toad also declared publicly that he did not give her any money and that she purchased this house entirely from her own funds because - like Angela Rayner - the purchase would be subject to a higher stamp duty charge if he in fact had a financial interest in the house and not paying this is tax evasion and a criminal offence.

No financial interest in respect of this house - which Mr Toad himself stated on television that he had just bought - is declared in the MP’s register of financial interests.

Such a mystery where his broke French girlfriend who couldn’t afford a hotel room for a night suddenly got nearly £1m in cash, given that Mr Toad has declared that it was NOT from him.

If you're expecting consistency, you're on a hiding to nothing

So this is where I think the personal is political for Mr Farage as well. Does his French girlfriend feel uncommitted to the U.K.? Is he allowing for the EU Settlement agreement because it affects her? How about his German ex?

How about Zia Yusef? Are his parents still alive, are they British citizens and have they given up their right to dual citizenship with Sri Lanka? Are his parents uncommitted or commuted to the U.K.?

It may seem unfair to look at people’s personal circumstances and how it affects their approach to policy, but in this case - given how completely lacking the economic case is, how conflated the different types of immigrants are in the convo, and how punitive the policy is towards permanent residents who do not fall under the EU Settlement agreement - I think it’s perfectly valid.

I doubt they’d be keen on immigrants paying no tax, either!

I suspect they will ramp up the costs and hurdles further as @Twiglets1 said, to make it as difficult as possible for people to obtain citizenship in future even if they have been residents for decades. I think your decision to apply for citizenship following the referendum result was wise and know many others who did likewise because they feared precisely this, where the xenophobia Farage and his ilk was going in the future. It’s an horrendous situation for those who can’t hold dual citizenship, though. The fact that someone like Farage is even being taken seriously when everything he says is self-contradictory and fantasy nonsense and pandering to the very worst aspects of human nature makes me feel quite ashamed of being British. It’s an embarrassment when in other countries to be associated with this and Brexit etc. due to being British.

Ah yes, the “buying a BRP card” swizz. When my DH went through that he was changing jobs and only found out his old passport carnet wasn’t considered proof of right to work anymore, so he had to go through the expedited path to getting the card - it was nearly £2500 to get it fast enough to not lose his employment offer.

He had to find documentation proving he’d not been out of the country for too long a period at any point in the past 10+ years. That would be something the government would know if the U.K. ran exit checks like EU countries, but they don’t so they put the onus of proof on him. Cue more money to the GP and council to get surgery registration info and council tax payment receipts. All to prove something he already legally had. It was basically a re-application for ILR on the sly.

Yes, people go to Dubai for the high life and to live in a very non-Emirati bubble. It’s the antithesis of what anti-immigration Britons say they would find acceptable.

I mean, there would definitely be fewer people with ILR because they stated they’d abolish it!

I am sure they’d also try to prevent as many people as possible from actually getting UK citizenship as you say.

If the aim was to reduce welfare costs you’d simply uncouple ILR from welfare entitlements in line with every other western economy of which I have any detailed knowledge and make welfare contributory. Linking citizenship to welfare entitlements is nonsensical and bizarre, unless you’re a nationalist nut job. Many who are citizens put nothing into the system and many who are not contribute an enormous amount and obviously won’t do so if we have a hostile and xenophobic environment and they are made to feel unwelcome. We struggle to attract the highly-skilled high-tax paying individuals we need already due to the comparatively low salaries in the UK and useless infrastructure and tax levels on higher earners which are some of the highest in the entire world. We’re struggling even to convince our own highly-skilled young people not to emigrate elsewhere for these reasons and clearly Farage’s proposals were to be implemented all of the above would get worse, not better. I’d love to know which services he’d plan to cut and which taxes he’d plan to raise to compensate for the costs of this policy which will be enormous. No surprise that he hasn’t told us!

Separating ILR from welfare entitlements and making the latter contributory would help to solve our growing welfare bill which, as the data shows, is overwhelmingly being driven by British people, not immigrants. It would also mitigate against the apparent fear that people granted ILR would become dependent on welfare without having contributed sufficient tax to fund this. It would also reduce the draw factor of the UK for asylum seekers. I just can’t see any sensible reason why someone not motivated by xenophobia would conclude that the solution to these problems is to remove ILR status entirely; it’s nonsensical and it’s so unequivocal that the economic effect of this would be overwhelmingly negative and make everyone in the UK significantly poorer, just like the Brexit Farage campaigned for. He really couldn’t be making it any clearer that he wants to make mugs of the people planning to vote for him.

Really, it’s for Mr Toad to have provided a proper impact assessment and economic analysis demonstrating the supposed benefits of his proposed policy, isn’t it? No shock that he hasn’t done so.

He really is a disgraceful charlatan.

@TheClaaaw - thank you. :) Obviously, I don't remember that from filling in my UK application a few years ago. That was shortly after the EU referendum and I spent about £2,000 on the application, biometric checks, citizenship test, induction ceremony and, finally, passport but it sounds like costs have risen.

At the time, I had had ILR for nearly 2 decades but I was worried about how Brexit might affect me. Also, as discussed upthread there were always extra charges - it wasn't enough to have an ILR sticker in my passport, I was supposed to buy an 'ID' card.

Ahh, and I'm replying, again. Okay. I don't think it is xenophobic to ask more immigrants to become citizens.

If the policy were to stop immigrants from becoming citizens - that would look like xenophobia to me.

I never said you were being academic at any point- I said that you seem to be approaching this from the position that I only have an academic take on this. Although I am having serious tech issues and may have scrambled together an incomprehensible post at some point.

Let's call it a day.

UK authorities obviously check applications to ensure that they are legally compliant. If your existing citizenship is with a country that doesn’t allow dual citizenship then you’d have to provide proof of relinquishing your citizenship of birth in order for your UK citizenship to be granted.

You keep saying that you don’t think it’s xenophobic but have provided no rationale for this position despite it being a textbook example of xenophobia i.e. prejudicing certain people in our society purely because of their nationality, like denying them a pension when they’ve met the qualifying UK NI contribution criteria just like everyone British who receives one. That’s what I’m questioning.

I’m trying to understand why you believe these policies are not xenophobic given that nobody’s been able to provide any rational explanation for removing ILR from all permanent residents or how this would benefit the UK either socially or economically (and in fact it would have a number of very negative impacts in both respects, as previous comments have highlighted).

If there’s no benefit (as you admit), then what could be the motivation for it other than xenophobia?

I am genuinely trying to understand your position and why you think that it is a reasonable policy to demand citizenship in order to achieve permanent residency, when you admit it would have little or no benefit; what purpose do you believe such policies have, then, that makes them “reasonable” and is not motivated by xenophobia?

My comments haven’t been about “how immigrants will feel about this”, on the whole. A few minutes ago you were criticising me for providing an “academic” response (i.e. rational analysis of practical policy issues) and now I’m being accused of “violins” or being overly sentimental? These comments seem to contradict each other so I hope you can explain.

I’m sorry to hear about your situation with your DH. I’m surprised that you take the position you do given that I expect you have a good understanding of the issues as a result of dealing with these systems personally. What I can’t understand is the rational basis for your view that these policies are not xenophobic when they literally meet the dictionary definition of the word, or what you think the motivation for them is - if not xenophobia - given that nobody so far has been able to provide any rationale for how they would be beneficial to the UK so there appears to be no non-xenophobic, valid justification for them from either a social or economic perspective.

Do other countries have a way of finding out? I have heard about many countries which assert that they don't allow multiple citizenships but I haven't heard of any enforcement.

As a dual citizen myself, how would my birth country know that I'd also taken on UK citizenship?

I don't think it is a very extreme position to ask people to become citizens outside the remit of visa restrictions. I don't think it is xenophobic to ask people to become citizens. It's not the hill I would die on, I don't think there is much to be gained from it either.

I don't think there's much room for agreement here. I don't see this as either a likely thing or, if it were to become policy, I don't consider it a xenophobic policy.

With regard to your following post, I don't need you to map out this sad story about how immigrants will feel about this - as if I've got lost in the theory of fairness without understanding the impact. We are in exactly this position of being a family and dh having ilr. It's not a situation I need you to demonstrate the tough choices in play. It is just not, xenophobic.

I think we've got to the point in the conversation which is entirely circular. I'm going to agree to disagree before the morning is lost.

Secondly, you keep talking about it like this is academic point to me and you are pointing out the human cost behind it. But this is our family. You can stop all that. Put the violin down.

What do you mean by this?

Of course I read what you wrote. I was responding to and questioning your comment that you don’t think it amounts to xenophobia.

In my previous comment to you I specifically questioned why you had stated that you think it’s a reasonable position to expect people to become British citizens in order to have permanent residency rights (a comment you made earlier) when you’d just also said that you don’t think the policy would actually achieve anything much.

I don’t understand your response given that I’ve been responding specifically to the comments that you have made and discussing them.

Do you ever read anything I write, or am I just the oppositional other for you to make your points?

This removal of ILR and demand that everyone must be a UK citizen to have permanent residency is xenophobic by definition: it’s stating you aren’t part of our society - just a temporary guest - unless you are British. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been here, whether you’ve built a life here, whether you’ve lived here for the vast majority of your life; your presence here in the country in which you’ve made your home and worked and raised a family will always be conditional and up for debate and reconsideration unless you become British.

The policy to remove state pensions from anyone who isn’t a British citizen, even if they’ve made 35+ years of NI contributions, again is pure xenophobia. How could it be anything but? It is literally stating you have made the same contributions as others but you will not receive your pension because you are foreign.

It’s fine to have different rights for citizens to an extent because certain rights are conferred by citizenship such as consular support, standing for election. Our voting system has some huge anomalies where UK citizens who live abroad can’t vote and neither can many long-term residents (while others can, again based purely on their nationality of birth!) so voting rights should be rationalised one way or the other in my opinion; based on either residency or citizenship.

But to extend these very specific rights conferred by citizenship to policy areas beyond the bounds of what it means to be a citizen, to the extreme of saying you can pay all the taxes and live here for decades but can’t have a pension or be considered a permanent part of our society unless you become a British citizen is a very extreme position indeed for a western European country to adopt, or indeed any western country at all (this is not the case in Australia, NZ, the US, or Canada, as well as in no other European country of which I’m aware).

Given that nobody’s been able to suggest any rational explanation of how these policies would actually benefit the UK either socially or economically, and it’s very clear that there would be a significant number of very negative social and economic effects if they were implemented (which is, presumably, why no other western countries have adopted such policies!), it’s difficult to conclude that the motivation is anything other than xenophobia.

Firstly, it feels like you are reading around my posts. I'm not advocating for the policy - I just don't think it is xenophobic.

Secondly, you keep talking about it like this is academic point to me and you are pointing out the human cost behind it. But this is our family. You can stop all that. Put the violin down.

Sorry for all the edits here, I'm fighting with my tablet and it is winning.

Why do they need to “share our nationality”? If they’ve moved here legally, they’re living here peacefully, contributing to our society, paying their taxes and abiding by our laws (hence have been granted ILR) why does it matter whether they have a UK passport?

Given the enormously negative impact this will have on a large number of our long-term residents, and the economic harm that it will cause, and the huge cost of implementing it, surely there has to be a significant benefit to the UK to outweigh all of that to make this a sensible policy to suggest.

If you don’t believe it would achieve much of anything, as you say, then I’m struggling to understand why you also said that you think it’s a reasonable proposal, given the huge negative impacts that it will have.