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

You say this because you don't live in an area that is predominantly Bangladeshi, or because you do not observe or are too afraid to voice what you see. You don't think there is a domestic violence problem for the women, for example? Is this because you don't.know or don't care to know?

I live in an area with over 40% Muslims and work in the community.

@Rewis Responding to this point specifically so it's separate from my general musings on the nature of migration:

I also think some of this is just for show. For example, when the income requirement for UK citizen family visas was raised a while ago, it felt more like a publicity stunt, a way to say “look, we’re doing something,” even though that group wasn’t really the main issue.

IMO this is a prime example of outcomes you get when you're unwilling to directly address the "main issue". In this case it was spouse visas being used as a vehicle for chain migration by predominantly Pakistani-origin UK citizens (plus a small handful of other similar countries). Arranged marriages to some cousin "back home" type of thing, leading to very segregated and insular communities.

But the general consensus is (was? it may be changing) that you can't target specific countries and you can't have different rules for different types of British citizens, not even birth vs naturalised citizens which is a distinction many countries make in terms of rights to extend citizenship to others.

So it ended up affecting a lot of British people with no/limited migration history who happened to fall in love with someone they randomly met while travelling or something, which wasn't even vaguely the group that was really the target of the crackdown.

Ah. So you choose not to see. It's certainly easier to say "oh that's stereotypes" than to try to help women in that situation.

I've been trying to back up my statements with data as much as I can, because I think that a lot of people genuinely have impressions about migration which aren't very reflective of the truth on the ground, and because I think it's important to unpack the very, very broad category of "legal migration" and the only slightly less broad categories of "work, study and family migration" which many people are quick to say they're totally fine with, because they're imagining something quite different from the reality.

Ha ha Chris Philp - Shadow HS - now telling a private meeting of Tory supporters that leaving the EU has hindered returning migrants, as we are out of the Dublin agreement... apparently over half x channel migrants claimed asylum in a EU country so could have been returned under Dublin.

Another Tory fuck up!!

If you're referring to me, you make a lot of assumptions.

Or he was simply justifying the Rwanda scheme or not on top of his brief.

Nick Timothy MP 2023
'in the last year we were able to use the Dublin Regulation, as this rule is called, only 105 out of more than 8,500 requests by Britain were granted – just 1.2 per cent of the total'

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/05/rishi-can-stop-illegal-immigration-keeps-european-court-quiet/

Sky News are also reporting that a plan to deal with asylum seekers was not conceived until 16 months after December 2020 (mid 2022) - however plans were revealed in early 2021 and similar offshore plans in 2020 - before we signed the Brexit trade deal:

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/priti-patel-offshore-denmark-refugees-asylum-rwanda-africa-b942912.html
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jun/28/home-office-proposals-due-on-sending-asylum-seekers-abroad
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/sep/30/revealed-no-10-explores-sending-asylum-seekers-to-moldova-morocco-and-papua-new-guinea

Or Brexiteers lied.

All the DA figures are in the public domain. They’re as @Clavinova says. They’re very low. It’s never been used to move half of any amount of people, other countries included.

The fuck up that was Brexit cannot be solely blamed on the Tory Party.

Yes the Conservatives were responsible for giving the public the democratic choice of staying or leaving the EU. However the blame for Brexit lies with the 17.1 million that voted for Brexit.

It’s more likely due to crossings going over 1000 in three days. Labour tend to look for a brief, anything, to the press when they go up.

Trouble is it’s only May and summer will be higher.

January 2025

In 2024 Germany has asked Bulgaria to take back 8,090 people who were registered as migrants for the first time on Bulgarian territory. Bulgaria has said it is responsible for 3,297 migrants, but in reality 290 people have been returned.

Italy was supposed to take in 12,841 migrants, but in fact it took in only three.

Other EU countries, which send the most migrants to Germany, are also taking in almost no people, despite being obliged to do so. Greece has taken in 22 people, and Croatia has returned 533 people [taken back - returned means in either direction under Dublin rules which is convenient for politicians as the public assume they are talking about sending asylum seekers out of the country when it can mean outgoing or incoming], although almost 13,000 should have been.

The Secretary General of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Carsten Linemann, said that for him this was "further proof that the asylum system in Europe is not working"

"The data speaks for itself. We need a change in migration policy. We must stop illegal migration to Germany and return people from the German borders," he said.
*
in 2024 Germany managed to return only 13 percent of the migrants that other countries were supposed to take care of, while at the same time taking back 45 percent of the people who were supposed to be returned to it.

https://fakti.bg/en/world/941309-refugee-wave-bulgaria-has-accepted-290-migrants-returned-from-germany

I know you have a hard time accepting that Brexit has failed

What an odd response.

It just shows the DA figures.

Did you actually believe that?

.

@Goldenbear

"Did you actually believe that?"

You do know that Brexit was decided on a referendum?

It's only failed if we rejoin.

I read this lovely article about population growth this morning;

We look into the Great Puffin Brexit Bonanza

https://www.channel4.com/news/how-brexit-is-boosting-britains-puffin-population

It is also a remarkable example of how Brexit in practice can allow the UK government to go against EU big agribusiness when it comes to protecting the environment.

Blaming this on Brexit is giving the Boris Johnson government a pass that it doesn't deserve. I wasn't here for the Brexit vote so I have no skin in the game fwiw. But they used their newfound control to make a political choice that they should be blamed directly for!

They could equally well have invented a "points-based" system that gave you 100 points for being from the EU, but they didn't. (Or 100 points for being from wealthy stable western countries outside the EU for that matter.)

Anyway, this graph is essentially the reason it's critical that the new ILR rules are backdated (as govt is saying they will be).

As Philp said, over half the people crossing in 2019/20 had originally registered with an EU country, so could be deported, one only has to look at the figures to see that once it became common knowledge that deportation was impossible, numbers soared.

I assume Badenoch put Philp into position because he is competent? and as an ex HO minister, would be on top of his brief?

If the answer is NO, then why is he there??

Aside, its hilarious that tory supporters on here claim Rwanda, taking a few 100 per year, would be a "deterrent" but deporting back to France etc by the 1000s would not be..... v strange logic.

People don’t really get the purpose of the DA. It’s not a deterrent and was not set up as such. The numbers are below.

Labour are still helping out Reform by focusing on the last Gov so there’s that too. They can’t keep briefing every time the numbers go over 500 crossings a day. They’ll not have enough to brief on.

Well, you re arguing against the former Tory HO minister & current shadow Home Sec.

Bottom line is prior to Brexit, hardly anyone crossed in a boat and we didn't have 100s of Hotels being used to house them all.

I don't think any reasonable person could possibly say this isn't a problem Labour inherited, even Philp acknowledges this.

But until we have better terms with the EU, short of using force, there is little we can do, breaking up the gangs or limiting their resources takes co-op with the EU, let alone returning migrants.

I don't understand your Reform argument - helping out?? they were a force before the GE or are you saying they are a one issue party?

Not this again. Pre Brexit - lorries, peak 2000s. The 100k would have been put somewhere unless we had tent cities.

DA not a deterrent for any country. See their figures.

’Inherited’ line is not going to help Labour this summer when smash the gangs continues to fail and summer numbers keep going up. It’s only May and over a 1000 in three days.

@jasflowers Aside, its hilarious that tory supporters on here claim Rwanda, taking a few 100 per year, would be a "deterrent" but deporting back to France etc by the 1000s would not be..... v strange logic.

This is not a totally spurious claim.

Some asylum seekers and migrants had been crossing into Northern Ireland, from the UK, to avoid the UK's Rwanda deportation policy. This is partly due to legal rulings that had limited the application of the Illegal Migration Act in Northern Ireland, creating a perceived loophole. Additionally, the Good Friday Agreement and the Windsor Framework offer additional human rights protections in Northern Ireland, making it a less likely destination for those who could be sent to Rwanda.

Migrants could also take the train from Crewe/Chester to Holyhead (Angelsey) then board the Ferry to Dublin. This is why Dublin had become "tent city".

My relatives in that area used to regularly see migrants on the trains

Other routes include Heysham/Liverpool to Belfast and then across the border into Ireland

(I'm not a Tory supporter BTW.)