Changes to immigration rules announced by Starmer

[OneAmberFinch]

Full white paper here is extensive and announces changes to all avenues of migration - basically their approach to resolving the issues of massively increased migration from 2019-2023/4.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6821aec3f16c0654b19060ac/restoring-control-over-the-immigration-system-white-paper.pdf

And Starmer's commentary on the BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/ce810e3z6dkt

Handful of headline changes: default timeline to get ILR to go to 10 years instead of 5; abolishing new care worker visas; raising skills threshold for Skilled Workers back up to graduate level; increasing minimum grades required for student visas; various bits and pieces around English language requirements among several other policies

@swimsong2.5 billion is not that much money compared to the U.K. economy and the Labour government is very doubtful that this has been properly estimated and costed, because the current maths on immigration doesn’t apportion a share of use of shared services or capital investment or long term care/schooling etc to any migrant, even one who is likely to stay - only an assumption as to what the person does for the current four year cycle is counted and almost no costs are attributed. So if a migrant comes, works for 5 years on minimum wage paying a small amount of tax, then has a family and claims benefits, they will register as having contributed in the official figures on immigration, even though that profile of migrant will be costly. They also won’t factor in the costs of their dependents either. It is nuts, but that is currently how it is done.

There was a programme about migration since 1997 on the BBC which had all the PMs up to Theresa “citizen of nowhere” May. What was interesting then was the advice from the Treasury about growth and migrant workers. From 1997 onwards it seemed like total orthodoxy that to grow the economy it was quicker to do this via skilled labour from the EU. Labour and Tory PMs discussed it. Then you have Brexit and the Boriswave (excellent phrase) which does something different; it provides positive incentives for lower skilled labour at lower wage rates to come to the UK. And the dependency and incentive to stay was far greater.

Whether Starmer does better is another point; the prediction is back down to pre Brexit levels in five years (Telegraph). Reform might not like, but other voters may.

How?

They are refugees

I think that is the real dishonesty which is that no government in the last 14 years even attempted to really get to that figure. That does break people’s faith in politics.

So Reform says net migration at zero and Starmer has said how bad it is with much support already… could backfire on Labour.

And @swimsong, 2.5 billion divided by the numbers we have had is actually only a few thousand per migrant. Which is great if that migrant is young, uses no services and goes home without starting a family or getting old, but that is not so much the case any more and lots of people are not returning home. You’d have to contribute a lot more than a few thousand a year to the economy to get to a place in which you cover the costs of the British state being expected to support you and possibly your family later on

Well this can change. You can put an age limit on visas. The UK doesn’t do this. But other countries do. Likewise retirement visas where you must have a certain level of assets and security. The UK can afford to be pickier.

Indeed. And it's illegal immigration that causes the most anger and resentment, as these hordes of young men pass through country after country to get here, destroying their ID, lying about their circumstances etc, knowing they will not be returned to their country of origin. It's a fecking joke. Legal migration is another matter, and yes long overdue for reform but needs more than the feeble Starmer will ever do. Why can't it be as stringent as Australia, Canada etc? I have lived and worked in other countries, and had to fulfill strict requirements - job to go to, proof of savings, to have a medical, to prove I could speak the language, to pay for health insurance. You would most certainly not be allowed to bring in your extended family with you. All fine by me, and why would anyone object? Decent human beings should not be a burden on the country they choose to move to.

I think net zero should be the aim. Have heavy restrictions for 3-5 years on people coming in while we're still reeling from the Boris Wave. Focus on the 8 million inactive adults of working age.

We also have to do something about the boats.

@Portakalkedi - those are all good points re regulation of migration but we’ve had 14 years of laissez faire migration policy and apparently saying you need actual criteria and be useful is unfair. Obviously it’s reasonable; if Brexit means anything then it means you can make actual rules.

Why not? You’ve got supporters on the thread already. Reform will have an easy sell.

@bombastix I totally agree - much much pickier is what people want

We need it now though not in 4 years. This white paper doesn't even touch the sides of what's needed after destructive immifration policies of the last 20 years

The point is that this stuff is not rocket science. You can cap visas, set rules for settlement routes, introduce capital and income requirements, criminal deportation, academic qualifications…

it’s just we didn’t actually do it. We just had a government that said it would get tough really soon. I mean who can take that seriously.

This white paper has a few things in it which could have happened at any time in the last five years. Some of them could have happened a decade ago.

Maybe. I suppose that frustration will help Reform. Especially now there’s the ok to discuss how bad it is.

Labour can’t rely on harking back to the last lot.

It’s all over Twitter and the dark corners of the web, I’m told… Along with the use of the word “import” when it comes to people…Which as a foreigner I find really offensive. Have to step away from this thread, too many falsehoods

The 2.5 billion is GDP growth, not the sum of the tax & NI they pay in.

It isn’t taxation, its growth in GDP.

I often get asked why I comment in favour of more immigration requirements, when I'm an immigrant myself. ("Why are you trying to make out like you're one of the good immigrants while throwing the others under the bus" etc)

But because I'm an immigrant I'm very familiar with immigration policy and just how lax a lot of the requirements are. I showed the white paper to a couple of friends yesterday. Most of the proposals are very sensible and obvious (like "the skilled work visa should be for high skilled jobs, so we are putting the threshold back up to higher than just secondary school level qualifications") and they were like what? wasn't this already the case?!

My biggest frustration is when people try to show any stats or graphs about "migrants" as a whole because there is just so much variation that it's meaningless to talk in averages.

Well said, I agree.

Half the stuff in this white paper is just reversing changes made in the last few years which were actively changed by the Tories to make things worse.

I think some individual Tory MPs tried to make changes in the right direction but the overall effect was so strongly in the direction of shifting the mix of immigrants even further towards mass, low-skilled and low-pay migration that it almost seems deliberate.

it is the care homes that are most concerning, very short sighted, even in the nhs we get nurses from abroad, let alone care homes where there is less pay

and of course it is the illegal migration that is the issue
the 17 year old men

and of course it is very helpful for university funding!

@simonjt@swimsong
yes I understand that. But it isn’t real growth, because it doesn’t measure the costs down the line, so it doesn’t actually raise GDP per capita. The government currently uses a series of very broken calculations on “growth” as do most of the academics who support the immigration contributor thesis. Because they assume a person who uses almost no services and goes back home. To be blunt, you could contribute a few thousand a year to GDP by turning up with £20k in your pocket, living with relatives and not working at all, provided that the treasury doesn’t cost in the expenses properly and just looks at a four year period. Which means s what they do. This is not to say that lots of immigrants don’t contribute or contribute to GDP per capita, but our system is so lax that the average immigrant doesn’t make the country wealthier. 2.5bn is actuslly a pretty small return for letting nearly 1m people recently and at least 500k for a long time into the country.

@bombastixagree with this. It’s also the same with Brexit - the government could have sent home people who didn’t contribute because freedom of movement is not actually freedom of settlement whatever happens it is freedom to work. And incorporated elements of contribution into some of our welfare systems. But they didn’t.