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 do respect its rights and freedom to whinge about this country as much as I like. I am aligned.

Personally I think that there is a jolly good economic reason for discouraging economic immigrants earning £36k from having children here. At that earnings level you are not going to be able to pay to have the baby privately, pay privately for your or its health care nor when the time comes send it to private school. So you are a net drain on the economy of this country as is your child. So in hard economic terms, given we are in a country which is not exactly thriving, discouraging non citizens from consuming resources makes a lot of sense. Economic migrants then have a choice - come here to work or go home to have children.

Yes, of course you can whinge and exercise freedom of speech!
But you have obligations too when you become a citizen. And there was a piece printed in the Times by Mahmood herself writing that things are changeing. People who get ILR and then citizenship, don’t just have rights. They also have OBLIGATIONs towards the country. And that I think is the main point.

Of course you have obligations to any country you live in. No one disagreed on that?

Of course there is an argument for any baby being born in the Uk is a god thing. The UK’s birth rate is very low so immigrants having babies is actually a contribution to the British economy longer term.

Yes - yet you still choose to live here instead of your amazing country of origin. Amazing that you claim to have made that sacrifice for your partner - surely you would have been happier for them to move to whatever country you came from and don’t want to say.

If you are referring to the horrors of British colonial rule, that was many generations ago. If you can find someone who was actually involved in it, then slag them off by all means.

I never used the word sacrifice. I used the word compromise. I don’t feel the need to go into details about my exact personal circumstances. My comments were made in context and was taken out of context.
Yes I am aware colonialism was a long time ago, but Brits aren’t exactly known to adapt when they move to new countries as immigrants… sorry forgot you guys are not immigrants. You are Expats ☺️

Then your issue is with them. I think anyone moving to a different country then whining is a moron, including the tossers who retire to Spain from the UK.

And having more babies is not a good thing unless those babies grow up to be economically useful adults. Many young adults are not earning so they aren’t benefitting the country economically until they are much older, whereas many people of my generation started work by the time they were 18.

OK @Miaaaaaow - so what do you personally consider your obligations to be towards this country?
Parliament is defining them as economic contribution, respect for law, payment of taxes, no violation of visa terms or criminal activity, respect for values and learning about the system, learning the language to a proficient level, not claiming certain benefits (ie being self sufficient). Then learning enough to pass the test which really is a fair amount of knowledge on our democratic system and history.

Also I don’t understand the derogatory reference to expat vs immigrant.
Expat is more temporarily, outside your home country with an intention to return home eventually. The whole point of being an immigrant is to settle with a view to acquiring long terms rights and obligations towards your host country.
As some host countries like Dubai won’t give you citizenship, you have to be an expat by definition.

Can I take a wild guess that you are not an economist nor a strategist?

Yes I tick all those boxes.

I have never heard anyone British describe for example a young Polish couple coming to work as fruit pickers for a few years as Expats. You know that too.

Only if they stay long enough to contribute rather than following the parental example of skipping off to where the grass is perceived to be greener and then whinging that it wasn't as verdant as they wanted it to be.

Being an immigrant and saying you hate the country you chose to move to suggests that you are not suitable for being given leave to remain. It shows that you are less likely to integrate. It’s not rocket science. We have inner city ghettos all over the country because of failed multiculturalism and whole swathes of communities not having integrated.

Are you referring to me? I never say I hated the Uk. Don’t put words in my mouth. I said I would be better off living in my country of origin and due to circumstance that is not possible for me and it makes me sad, but I also love my DH.

Full Bupa after I passed my probation. I work in commercial management

I may be misunderstanding this because this is the first I've read of it. If I'm understanding correctly this is absolute madness, not only on individuals who want to remain in the UK but for the whole country. Migrants are filling essential low paid jobs. The care industry already suffered hugely during brexit. I don't know how it will survive if this goes through. But it needs to survive, it's not like people are getting care unnecessarily, if anything there needs to be more of it available not less.

This is not “paying for your own healthcare” and never using the nhs.
It’s an insurance model for a handful of elective or non urgent treatments or procedures. If you develop any chronic condition they offer no care, asthma, diabetes, crohns etc, the same if you were to become pregnant, no treatment, birth, nothing, no menopause treatments or therapies, no A&E service, no life saving procedures or operations.
The idea that people earning 50k and over are not using the NHS because they have some poxy workplace health insurance that gives them a free pair of glasses every year, a free cavity filling and a therapist session is the most farcical thing over ever heard.
You sound very young and naive.

The £15k on a knee replacement would undermine this view....

As would the ongoing treatment for an autoimmune disease

How does that undermine the factual and quite lengthy list of things Bupa “full cover” does not cover?
The majority of people with health insurance in the UK still avail hugely of NHS services over their life.

The first thing I thought when I heard these rules was 'how about mothers'. I hear you OP. I think it's just a populist measure that's not at all well thought through.

“I have never heard anyone British describe for example a young Polish couple coming to work as fruit pickers for a few years as Expats. You know that too.”

I don’t think that is a very good example. Young people travelling the world and doing seasonal jobs and having fun are a category of their own. Let’s say a Polish couple 15 years ago did arrive with the intention of making a long term life in UK, but started with seasonal work to improve their language skills etc - that would be immigrants. But just visiting for a few seasons to learn English and have fun, just like a Brit kid working as a windsurfing teacher on a Greek island or doing a ski season in France or working in Paris as a barista, that is young people for you.

Nah… Brits live abroad for decades and call themselves Expats. I also hope to leave the UK once I retire. Maybe I am an expat too then.

DB lived in Switzerland for a year, he found where he lived quite socially conservative and rigid in a way he hadn’t expected, he thought it was a bit of a weird place. I think it’s quite typical to move somewhere and moan, humans tend to make their familiar their default.