Proposed ILR Rules – The Unfair Impact on Working Mothers and the Need for a Full Maternity Exemption

[Zinary]

I am writing this with a newborn in my arms, and my heart is completely breaking.
Instead of being allowed to heal, rest, and soak in the pure joy of my baby, I am sitting here crying, terrified, and questioning if I made the right choice to have a child. How can a mother be driven to question her greatest gift, her absolute world, all because of a cruel change to immigration law?
On 2 November, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced the finalized "Earned Settlement" rules. To get Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) in the standard 5 years, you now must earn over £50,271 a year.
But the absolute malice is in the fine print: you must meet that £50,271 threshold in three out of the last five years before you apply.
The Home Office is actively spinning this "3 out of 5 years" rule as a generous maternity "buffer." They are telling the public it gives women two years of leeway to have a baby.
Let me tell you why that math is a blatant, calculated lie for real women:

1. The Starting Trap: Many of us spent our first two years in the UK working up from entry-level salaries, earning below that £50k mark. Our two "buffer years" are ALREADY GONE. We have zero margin for error left.
2. The Maternity Penalty: Pregnancy is nine months of physical toll, followed by maternity leave and statutory pay dips. If your annual P60 earnings drop below £50,271 because you lose out on bonuses, commission, or overtime while caring for your baby, your year doesn't count. The clock resets.
3. The Multi-Child Ban: If you want to have two children within five years, it is mathematically impossible to hit that threshold for three consecutive years.

If the math fails you because you chose to have a baby, you are forced onto the 10-year path. The punishment? Paying thousands of pounds more in upfront Immigration Health Surcharges (IHS) and visa extensions just to keep your home. For a family, we are talking about an extra £35,000+ extracted by the Home Office. This is evil. It is a pay-to-settle hierarchy that penalizes the female body and treats human lives like a spreadsheet. The right to live and build a family must NEVER be a hard choice. The Home Office is laying these rules before Parliament next month (December) to take effect in 2027. We have a tiny, critical window to fight this. I am calling on every mother, every ally, and anyone who believes that a woman shouldn't be penalized for having a child to help us.

• If you are an immigration lawyer: How do we launch a class-action challenge against this under the Equality Act?
• If you have links to journalists or MPs: Please help us get this cruel math into the mainstream media. Backbench Labour MPs forced a U-turn on care workers last week—we can force a U-turn on mothers if we make enough noise.
• If you are a British citizen: Will you write to your MP on behalf of your migrant friends and colleagues who have no voice in the ballot box?

Please bump this, share this, and tell me what we can do. I refuse to let a spreadsheet dictate whether it was a "mistake" to hold my beautiful baby.

I have paid all my dues all of it , I am able to care for my children. Even during my maternity my husband works extra hours to meet our obligations.
The rule that takes away my choice to bare children within a certain timeframe is infringing on my fundamental rights as a human

Wow, that's some level of entitlement. You haven't 'paid all your dues', your £10,000 contribution goes nowhere near covering the costs of NHS usage that you and your baby will access now and in the future, plus the tens of thousands required to educate your child.

I don't have children but have paid tax for over 30 years, it is the British tax payer who is covering your costs, not your paltry £10k

A previous PP made the point that when she got ILR it was household income that was taken into account. I have tried to look but couldn't find a definitive answer on this. Is this now different?

3. Systemic Rules vs. Personal Normalcy
There is a massive difference between a couple choosing to wait to have children based on their own personal readiness, and a government legislating a framework that structurally resets a woman's residency clock if she has a baby.
This policy does not affect men on the exact same visa route, because their salaries do not take a statutory maternity dip. When a government policy creates a system where a man can secure his permanent residency in 5 years, but a woman doing the exact same job is pushed to 10 years solely because she gave birth, it is not 'hyperbolic' to call it unjust. It is indirect sex discrimination, which is why organizations like Maternity Action are actively fighting it."

Ok when you put it like that fair enough. I can see how women are getting the short straw here.

But how can you solve that?

I can’t see what mechanism you could introduce to fix it?

Ie. If you just said you are exempt in maternity years. Then surely this would just encourage low earners to just be pregnant for 5 years. Costing everyone even more money. Making them state dependent. Incentivising poverty.

How would you do it?

I'm not in UK now so don't have skin in the game on this but it's not helpful to anyone to play the racism card. The unfortunate fact is that UK finances are not what they once were. Hopefully things will turn around in the medium term but in the meantime (and always, in fact), it is entirely appropriate for the govt to ensure that people coming into the country will not become a burden on the public purse.

I genuinely feel for the OP, while not entirely agreeing with her. This must feel like an awful grenade.

Well. They're the rules.

Something that a lot of posters are ignoring is that the OP’s husband/partner/child’s father may be a British citizen which means the child is also a British citizen and therefore entitled to all the state support of education, health care etc that you’re all saying costs too much.

Changing the goalposts sucks, and it’s been happening more and more over the past few years.

I’m curious if there’s an argument for maternity discrimination because this rule will, as you say, impact women significantly more than men by default.

I see the other thread has now been deleted. I still can't work out if the OP is posting for Rupert.

Brit can bare a child now but an immigrant will have to wait to bare a child?

You are ignoring the fact we ALL HAVE TO WAIT TO BEAR A CHILD!!

OP you can share the leave with your partner so you do not have to have a full year out of earnings whilst he has a full year in. So it’s not treating females/ mothers differently.

Eligible parents in the UK can share up to 50 weeks of Shared Parental Leave (SPL) and 37 weeks of Statutory Shared Parental Pay (ShPP) during the first year after a child's birth or adoption placement.

https://www.gov.uk/shared-parental-leave-and-pay

Do this! Congratulations on your baby x

Many women born in the UK have to delay pregnancy for years or even make the difficult decision they can't afford to have children

No one “pops out” a child.

That's a bizarre take. Immigrants can be any race. And so, importantly, can British people.

If other parent is British citizen I would take 3-4 months shared parental leave if I was the mother. Then other parent take the rest.

I would do this anyway even if both trying to gain ILR as it makes it ‘fair’ across the couple. So neither is on a different path to the other with one on 5 year route and one on longer.

A lot of young people who have been born here wouldn’t embark on starting a family because housing is so expensive due to the shortages of availability and job opportunities are so poor.
Yes, maybe things are tougher for you than you might have envisioned but you don’t have a divine right to choose the life you would like in any country of your choosing.
You need to be realistic. It’s hard enough for those who should have an expectation of being able to have a family here.

Which Rupert are you talking about?
the Bear? Murdoch? Grint?
If you think the OP isn't genuine then just report the thread, I have

This.

If it is so inhumane here, why don't you go somewhere else and take your children with you?

I imagine you have no intention of doing so because there is no other country in the world, including the one you came from, where you would get better treated and still feel entitled to complain about it.

It's a case of Much Wants More. How about a bit of gratitude? It's not a dirty word and it would suit you better to display some.

But in the meantime, I would like to seriously know why you intend staying in a place that has you crying, shaking and desperate?

I imagine you will come up with some bullshit, if you bother to answer at all, but unless one of the reasons is that you are in gaol and can't leave-right now-then that's all it is: bullshit.

I don’t see why there would be an exemption. People want an immigration crackdown. I don’t know why have a baby means people should be treated differently in that regard.

It seeks that to some a migration crackdown always means “a crackdown on migration but not in a way that impacts me and my family.”

Nobody is taking away you right to have children. That’s a hysterical interpretation. You are absolutely free to plan your family and just accept it will delay your ability to obtain ILR.

Health and education provision are paid for out of public funds. Yes they may be basic rights, but they don’t come for free. And one year maternity leave means there are 4 other years to reach the minimum salary threshold. It’s not inhumane to say if you want to settle quickly, you need to make a contribution to the country yourself settling in.

It's a very entitled view and reeks of I am an immigrant but I am better than 'those' immigrants.
I am an immigrant under the EU scheme, I have been here for longer now than my home country (29 years) but it would still cost me £2500 to apply for a British passport which I can't justify.
I am slightly worried that the goal posts are moving and that the EU settlement scheme may be next but if so I will leave. My children are almost grown now.

I class my self as an immigrant, even my children don't see me as one but I am one and I am no different to 'the others' but I totally agree that something has to be done and it's not just the UK, my home country is even worse, and I will struggle to get my kids to get dual nationality in my home country as they have never lived there.

The rules aren't changing for those married to British citizens. They stay on the existing 5-year pathway to ILR and the income thresholds remain intact.

OP, it's also worth pointing this out to you, and also adding that of you're both on the ILR track, joint/household income is taken into account.

Having read the rules quite carefully, they seem quite measured to me. As is so often the case, when you hear individual cases some elements can seem frustrating or unfair. But the reality is there have to be some rules and a balance.

Fellow immigrant here. And also one that has never taken a penny in handouts. Although it would be incredibly disappointing if I had to leave the UK - I did come here knowing that circumstances can change. My own home country has incredibly tough immigration laws so it would be naive of me to think that I have the complete right to stay somewhere because I want to. I was born in my home country, I maintain citizenship of my home country therefore from a legal standpoint that is h my home and they are responsible for me - even if my real home is here.

You don't. Immigration isn't covered under the equality act.
If you want to campaign or sue it would be under the human rights act and the ECrtHR and you would want to use Article 8 but you will lose.
Article 8 is a qualified right and the ECrtHR wont touch a case like this as the uk is a sovereign nation and has the right to make laws that protect our country and/or our citizens and immigration laws fall under that clause.
So you can try and sue but all you will do is push more people to the right and the resulting public backlash to your campaign will just make government's harsher on Immigration.

Actually, it is immigrants like the OP that fuel the narrative of entitled immigrants who want to just take from the UK, not follow the rules or try to bring their own country's rule to the UK. This totally plays into Reforms hands as they can easily twist this into a narrative which will whip up the racists and gain them votes.
It's not racist to have a robust immigration policy.
Immigrants who come to the UK, slag it off and demand more benefits than British people get as standard are not going to get a good reception. That's not racism, it's realism.

Thanks for an intelligent post that actually contributes to understanding.

Genuine question: why does limiting immigration to higher earners benefit the people already here? I understand they will pay income tax but doesn’t this just limit the career prospects/social mobility of people born in the UK? As you end up with a sort of international elite of the best educated and most privileged able to move wherever they fancy, increasing competition for people born here and likely keeping them in lower paid/lower status jobs (unless they are already very privileged and therefore able to compete with these high skilled immigrants)?

I am not anti immigration but I do feel very angry that the poorest and most vulnerable migrants who usually had very little choice about leaving their home countries and genuinely need and deserve our humanity are being so brutally scapegoated, with massive knock on impact for British born people of colour, whilst we all ignore the much more numerous wealthy and privileged economic migrants who I don’t feel are necessarily a net positive to society as a whole, and would probably have a good/successful life in their country of origin anyway.

There is no discrimination direct or otherwise.