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.

To be fair, I had to put off having kids till we were financially stable, in an appropriate house and I was in a job with good maternity leave. This is pretty normal when deciding to have children isn't it?

( do realise accidents happen btw and those can't be planned for)

Did you give birth privately out of interest?

The fact that 15% doesn’t go in British nationals is just going to fire up the Reform supporters.

Would a fairer option maybe that you don't get flipped from a 5 year to a 10 year track, but instead can apply after your 3 high earning years, so it might be after 6 years or whatever, if you have maternity leave in there? So essentially you can still apply once you've shown your earning power, and it's only delayed by as long as you take maternity leave for, if you've had a lower paying job for the first couple of years.

Why is it fair to expect to be able to have children which need schooling and healthcare from the state when the mother doesn’t have the right to live here indefinitely?

Yup. Shocking. The poster can't stand the place, bitches about the nhs and claims the only good thing about it, is other immigrants. And we're welcoming these people?! I can't think of any other country that would tolerate this. We're a joke nation.

The remaining thing that is wrong is changing the rules before people have the ability to apply for indefinite leave to remain. If you came on a legal work visa, have worked and paid taxes, you should be able to complete under the regime in place when you arrived.
People have made big decisions to relocate, spent thousands, put their kids in school etc, only to have the rules change under them and have years and thousands added..

But that is how it is. Why wouldn’t you wait until you are settled and don’t have the hoops to jump through. And then, even worse, bitch about how awful it is.

The UK government was clearly in the middle of changing the procedure though, you can’t move to a country and then claim naivety to that.
In OP’s specific case the consultation was published a calendar year ago. The report stated the time it took to gain right to remain would increase. She chose to try for a baby regardless, that’s on her.

Not every job paying over £50k is one in the private sector!

Its not lack of humanity. You have a choice. Breed a couple kids earlier and wait longer for ILR or wait another couple of years and get the ILR first.

And a simple antenatal care and birth with no complications averaged out just over £5k in 2022, so likely higher now never mind any care for the infant aftwards

I did say people need to contribute properly. We do have a major problem with unemployment and sickness benefits, I wish I had the answer to that. But I am sure the answer is not giving benefits to people who haven't contributed. We can't do much about the home grown workshy variety unfortunately.

Not at all, just speaking from experience that a lot of higher paying jobs can be. You can earn very well in the public sector also

Have you never had a medical emergency in your family?

The reason it appears that 85 per cent of welfare goes to Brits, is the State Pension is counted as welfare.

Which it is. Over half of DWP expenditure is on pensions and related benefits.

Bear in mind most people earning over £50k don't use the NHS as jobs paying that kind of money offer private healthcare

Absolute nonsense. £50k is not a salary that in anyway supports exclusive private healthcare. It's about £3k a month net. Bear in mind average monthly mortgage repayments / rent are around £1.2-1.7k. Please explain to me how you are going to pay for a private labour (£20k ish) on that salary?

It isn’t for you to say whether or not the government is right

The government have been democratically elected by the people of this country. They made a manifesto commitment to reform the immigration system and reduce net migration. They are doing so.

If you don’t like the democratic decisions of the UK population, perhaps this is not the country for you?

I wish people would look up what "indefinite" means. It does not mean "forever" - it means "it has not been defined".

Is there any other country in the world where 15% of welfare goes on non-citizens? I just checked the US and and it's about 4%.

OP, can you be clear what you are looking for? Are you saying you want the British net contributing taxpayer to fund you? If so, why do you think they should.

We’re probably not a particularly desirable place for the ‘international elite’ at the moment, so I wouldn’t worry about that.

It may mean undefined in a dictionary but in the context of immigration it means you will never be told to leave unless you break the rules, ie forever.

We are in that income bracket and don't have private health care as a family. DH has it through his employer; when a colleague had cancer, it was back to the NHS for treatment

It will be, unless you are absolutely loaded, private oncology is prohibitive. See also the fallout from serious accidents, sepsis, very much else.

People saying smugly that they 'go private' seem to have have no idea of the cost of treating certain things or the willingness of their 'insurers' to pick up the sometimes several hundreds of thousands of pounds tab for something major. There are no private A&Es either.

It isn't quite the same as seeing a private GP or having your cataracts done for a few grand. At all.

Not my direct family, no. Grandparents yes.

I get your point, very much appreciate the NHS and more than happy to pay my fair share towards it