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

Of course they’re going to cherry pick statistics to prove the benefits of immigration. they’re immigration lawyers.

the net benefits thing has now been disproven. At best, it’s break even.

Seems pretty daft to celebrate arbitrary visa cuts when there's no plan to manage the gaping holes... common sense would suggest plans come first.

Ah yes the "We did nothing wrong in Govt" BS

Why the Tories are behind both Reform and Labour in the polls.

People are rejecting both main parties & reform are attracting former Tories both voters and MPs.

The party will be an irrelevance by the next GE under Badenoch - where is she?

Who is celebrating?

What a bizarre thing to say.

And why is on me to have a plan? I’m
not in government.

Why would they risk their lives on a small overcrowded boat if they could just apply for visas?

The migration figures are due in the next month. There should be a drop.

While no politician (even Farage won’t give a figure) will offer a figure, the slightly pathetic messaging now is if we get down to something like 200k per year this is reasonable, ie pre Brexit figures.

Reform will say something like zero. I say that because the closer they get to government the more they will wobble on this; they won’t have none. But they could have a much tougher system.

The outlier is the Conservatives; but they are toast obviously

Oh good, this again.

Just look at the settled status stats, I honestly can’t be bothered with posters like you who clearly have an agenda.

A few on mners repeat 14 years tirelessly but it’s a bit stuck. Better to get a tshirt with it on and move on.

Everyone else has. More people loathe Starmer and Reeves and Labour are behind Reform already.

Starmer can say what he wants , no one believes he’ll do anything about immigration. No mention at all about small boats and that is people’s concern .

I do have to smile when people bring up Tory immigration policy as a sort of gotcha... to people who are probably even more furious with the Tories than they are

Why would they risk their lives on a small overcrowded boat if they could just apply for visas.

Surely at some point they have to prove where they’re from, otherwise how can immigration officials decide whether they should be accepted as refugees?

The rot set in with Tony 'Bollocks' Blair who said that everyone needed a degree, so all the Redbrick Universities started offering 'Mickey Mouse' degrees - Textiles, Media Studies, Golf Managenent, Surf Science, Football Studies.

Apprenticeships were neglected so now we have a skill shortage.

Unfortunately now that NI has gone up and all employees have to be paid the minimum wage some businesses can't afford to take on an apprentice. Add on to that setting up a workplace pension scheme and a PAYE system and it all puts a burden on employers.

The Conservatives are yesterday’s news. For reasons that are pretty clear. If you want to see their real irrelevance they put forward their own migration bill a fortnight ago which no one cares about (yes yes they are not the government).

Some of the things in this paper are fine with me (10 years not 5 big tick on that). Will it actually dramatically change migration figures? Remains to be seen. Starmer will grind this out for another four years, when the talk will still be of the net migration figure.

That said, assuming the UK continues to do trade deals, then skilled labour will be regulated that way (not including NHS). The implication is domestically there will be quite a lot of change which hasn’t been explicitly discussed yet with the public.

I followed a link in the Critic article linked earlier by @bombastix (Explaining the Boriswave) and just read this very interesting substack piece on the Graduate route. This is a route that on the face of it I'm sure most people assume is very highly skilled.

There is so much in this that I'm finding it hard to choose what to quote!

It’s a fixation. Time to look forward, everyone else is.

@User135644

"At least we know who they are"

www.standard.co.uk/news/london/iranian-terrorism-israeli-embassy-asylum-seeker-taxpayer-house-b1227051.html

From Neil O'Brien's substack piece on graduate visas linked above

"Regular readers will know that since the launch of the graduate visa, student visas have massively increased. It has not affected numbers from developed countries, but has been one cause of a huge expansion in numbers coming from developing countries.

"This is likely because of the opportunity to work in the UK with no minimum salary requirements is much more valuable to people from poorer countries (this is not a criticism of them, just a description of the incentives here)."

I was expecting to see that student visas were partially driven by graduate opportunities, but that jump is even bigger than I was expecting!

(edit as image is under review: screenshot of the graph of student visas in the section "The story so far". The graph shows that student visas rise dramatically when there is a post-study work visa available and fall when it's withdrawn. Since the new graduate visa came in around 2020, student visas from India rose 10x (200k vs 20k) and also rose a lot from Africa and the rest of south Asia, but stayed constant for countries like the US)

In other words "stop talking about it, they might forget"...

Graduate route has long term issues. And is perhaps particularly ridiculous when you consider employment levels for UK grads. If this was the US this wouldn’t be an issue.

The UK has a fantastic university sector which is genuinely world leading. Some bits are less so and need looking at and who is being admitted.

Forget what exactly? Reform is more likely to win.

You want to be stuck on 14 years too? Go ahead but it’s not that which is beating you in the polls.

Yes this is a shit show imo which has been there a long time. Some of our university sector needs closer examination and admission requirements carefully looking at.

They lie.

That's why the Home Office have to employ specialist translators to determine for example, which side of the border of country A/B they come from. This takes time and money.

Migrants also lie about their age and apparently we aren't allowed to do dental checks to determine this. Hence the ridiculous situation where you have a man with a full beard in a class full of children.

https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/news/2021/12/27/surging-illegal-boat-crossings-drive-record-spike-in-asylum-age-fraud/

So you cannot back up your figures with facts? simple truth is "no one knows how many stayed or went back, however if business is to be believed, most have gone home.

But i'm the one with an agenda... couldn't make it up!

Unbelievable lack of awareness.

Reform are way way ahead of the Tories.

Yet more issues the Tories failed to address when in power.