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.

Equality is unfortunately a bit of a myth, financially at least. My children are having a fairly privileged childhood compared to my childhood raised on benefits. Your child being raised by at least 1 parent with a decent career and the drive to immigrate and work hard is massively better off that a child in the same town born to parents who have been brought up as generations of benefit claimants.

We're all making hard decisions every day when we decide to have a child and to have a second. We're weighing up legalities and government policies. Women who are self employed, women with disabilities, women who don't meet their partners until they are almost 40 and need IVF, women born with fertility issues, women on zero hours contracts, women in relationships where there is domestic violence, lesbians who need to find a source of sperm and dealw with unfair IVF rules.

This is not the only rule that means there is inequality.

No it doesn't.
Article 8 is a qualified right and you can have as many children as you like whether you can afford to or not just not in the uk anymore or on our benefits and health services or in our free schools.

Tbh people making false human rights claims are the reason people are getting fed up with and want to leave the human rights convention. Having babies on someone else's dime is a piss take not a human right

What net benefit for me? No we are living here because of specific circumstances which has to do with DH’s family. Rather personal so I won’t elaborate, but drop the “you can just go and live elsewhere then” as life for many of us are not that easy.

That isn’t true. At least 2 of your posts (the lengthier ones) are ai generated. It is completely obvious.

Hi @Zinary I do understand and support you, particularly as a Brit who has lived abroad. As you say you've done all the right things and financially massively invested in a life here, as will your spouse, according to the rules set out and now they are retrospectively changing them - probably in a desperate attempt to appease the far Right. The xenophobic comments on this thread give me the ick about living here. All these people going on about net contribution when the vast majority of them will be net detractors themselves. I say this as a single mum who paid over £50,000 in tax last year.

what does financial stability mean?? Most people keep saying you need to be financially stable.

i am currently paying all off my bills. My family is not seeking public funds? Let’s end the POC of financial stability and face the core issue.

If this law came out in Jan 2025, the impact will be fairer? After childbirth, your body has gone through a lot of changes and you need time to be mentally and emotionally ready for work, there a reason the 52weeks option was put in the first place.

I need to be and give my best at work. Running back to work after one month of delivery because I don’t want to be held back by the Immigration laws is very unfair to my employer. My employer deserves my best.

i can care for myself during my time off I just need the law to be on my side.

Many women don’t get pregnant easily, age is not our side. The five years game is not helping, it’s completely different if I don’t want to be pregnant as a result of personal reasons. This is the government taking away my choice.

if you think this is a just move? I question your compassion on us on the journey to building a family.

Is this the most intelligent reform bot designed to actually make even moderate people more against immigration 😂

@Miaaaaaow Not really, you don’t seem to have anything good to say about the country and are rather insulting.

No. You’re using AI generated slop. You don’t even care enough to bother yourself to type your own responses. Why should anyone engage with you?

If you don’t like whatever immigration laws the Uk pass then leave.

@Arbourimage Quick question, Is the rule taking away our choice to children on our terms or not?

keep in mind we have paid upfront and completely responsible for our finances

@Skippythemagnificent do you have a question you need me to respond too? Ask and stop trying to water-down my situation

This rule only really discriminates against women if, as a woman, you decide to take a long maternity leave. In the US maternity leave doesn’t really exist, so professional women often go back to work 6-12 weeks after having babies as there isn’t another option.

In this country the maternity leave laws are reasonably generous in comparison, but just because you can take a full year off work, it doesn’t mean you have to. Have a baby and go back to work after 6 weeks and your earning potential isn’t changed that much.

To be clear, this isn’t the option I chose when I had my children, but I had the luxury of choice so I made the best choice available to me at that time.

I agree with you but my point was, it’s the same when I’ve chosen to live in another country. Had to jump through the hoops that get changed all the time and had to leave a country I had built a life in for the same reasons (immigration laws). I think calling it inhumane is a bit of a stretch from the OP.

As I said, there is no point engaging with you as you’re using AI to write your responses. Why would I ask you anything when I could have and ask ChatGPT and get the same response?

If you don’t like the laws that are passed here then leave. Unfortunately most British people who don’t like what’s happening are stuck here.

So did you have to pay for maternity care/birth? Will you and/or your child benefit from the NHS/education system?

I’m not sure anyone can have children on their terms in the current climate and some consideration has to go into it, particularly financially.

Nonsense, even the majority of British women do not take 52 weeks off. Most women take 39 weeks and some take even less and return to work due to financial concerns.
You aren’t unique. Why should your desire to take 52 weeks off to “rest and recover” be protected above and beyond other women?
You have a financial obligation to meet, ie your minimum earning requirements. It’s up to you to make that work, choosing to have a child during that time was always going to make it harder.

Correct me if i'm wrong, but doesn't the wage threshold to get ILR include household earnings? It certainly did for me when I got it 4 years ago.

Does anyone ever have a choice to have a child on their own terms? It’s pretty universal that people take finances, health, caring abilities, lifestyle into account before having a child.

If you can’t meet your immigration earning requirements due to your choice to have a child and take maternity leave then you simply have not been financially responsible, that’s fairly obvious.

It’s not ‘on your terms’ if you expect your child to have access to education and healthcare,

At the risk of contributing to yet another AI frothing thread…

I would love to move countries but there are rules in place that I can’t or don’t want to meet. I have to accept that and make other choices.

in this particular case regarding maternity, is there a worry about creating a loophole?

Exemption by pregnancy would lead to many other issues.

It often seems unfair when the rules change, but that doesn’t mean governments shouldn’t be allowed to change the rules.

To take your three points in turn:

First, presumably the point is not to accept those who start on entry-level salaries. We have more than enough unemployed people already here who ought to be able to take entry level jobs. Personally I think it would be unusual to be able to progress from an entry-level job to earning over £50k in just two years, but obviously some people might manage it.

Second and third, this depends on your contractual entitlement to maternity pay and how long you take as maternity leave. Many jobs, especially higher paying ones, offer more than the statutory minimum. In any event, women can choose how long a period of maternity leave to take. When I had my first child, I didn’t take any maternity leave other than the 14 weeks that was paid at 100%. In those days (30 years ago) it was common for women to go back to work when their children were 3 months old because that’s all they could afford. I imagine many women still go back to work earlier than they would like.

The choice to have a family will always have financial implications. I waited until I was 36 to have my first child and limited my family to two children, when ideally I would have had more, purely for financial reasons.

lol you got really annoyed about my post about the Uk, didn’t you?
Its a beautiful country with lots of brilliant people and I love London probably because it’s so International and full of immigrants 😝
However, a lot of it also sucks. The NHS, expensive childcare, work life balance although improved a bit in the last decade, care for sick, disabled and elderly. I want to make the point that not all migrants are here for your NHS.

I got pregnant before the announcement, gave birth before the announcement.

I keep saying this, I wonder why you are refusing to acknowledge- I am financially stable and all other things are in control to came for our economic status.

the government woke up while I am on maternity leave to change the goal post. In the white paper these wasn’t stated.

the government is not right on this one