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

Yes, I do absolutely understand that. But they did cause the problem in the first place. I see that as a failure of Boris Johnson's government.

The question is how predictable it was. I suppose we should be glad that they recognised it when it happened and tried to fix it.

Labour are claiming to have made a difference with returning failed asylum seekers and increasing controls on illegal workers. That would be a good thing - unless it's just spin to take some credit for the drop - so I would like to see some numbers.

I agree migration in the UK is very complex and it is hard to know which levers to pull. Tricky balance. I expect lots of uncertainty in the next few years. Which will ironically drive away high skilled immigrants with other options and attract more low skilled ones.

Yes you may have a point. I think the 700k was just not going to work anymore politically but how you change things so we don’t see the people we want to stay leave instead etc is a hard one.

Yes, and while they are here they get some gullible UK female up the duff and then apply for a council flat ( and get priority because she's pregnant) and then they apply for asylum and can't be deported because they have a "right to a family life"..
They then join the other 1-3% of overstayers who can't get a job because they have done a Mickey Mouse degree in "Media Studies" or "Communications" or "Astrobilogy" and we end up paying out benefits for years.

Great idea.🙄

That is the Reform fantasy checklist ticked off

And that's the sneery, wilfully blinkered elite-lefty superiority complex checked off.

Are you a right winger or a far rightie?

I'm just right.

And everyone sees the snide superiority for what it is.

Just speaking to someone o/s post covid there was incredibly high immigration and subsequent pressure on houses there too.

It's a tough one, especially if it's lower end income jobs people may choose not to do. Universities I do care about and we do education well for the most part, but not every visa will be necessary.

Eastern, this sponger is outta here soon (as soon as the sale of our house is finalised)-- not angry anymore, but definitely over it. We legal immigrants who are paying the NHS Immigrant Surcharge currently at a rate of £1035 a year for imaginary services, in addition to the usual tax and NI from our wages, do love being told again and again that we are sucking at the British public tit. It comes out of our family budget when we are donating about £3-4k in fees to your Home Office coffers with every visa renewal for me every couple of years. Love being told by Daily Mail-lickers that I am here to take benefits that I am wholly ineligible for. There is no sense of security that under any future kneejerk anti-immigrant rule changes I would be able to even remain here with my English husband and our children. That last one is the real decider for me.

University fees were £9000 in 2012. There's been high inflation since then, so in real terms that was worth the equivalent of £13,500 now.

But current fees are only £9,535. That's a 30% decrease in real terms.

That's the root of the University funding problem. Propping it up with ever-increasing international students (taking a cash handout now in return for selling out our future) is unsustainable.

We need to reduce the number of students going to university to do pointless degrees by improving non-University options. Have a smaller number of higher quality degrees, which are actually worth students forking out higher fees for. And potentially also increase direct grants from the government to universities, only when the decrease in numbers and increase in educational quality actually makes that a worthwhile state investment.

Tony Blair was wrong, frankly.

Who has told you that you here for the benefits?

Why do you finding difficult to comprehend that migrants come in all shape and sizes? Some are here for the freebies, others aren’t.

You seem to identify with the former while claiming you are the latter.

Or else you need some vinegar with your chips.

I'm so sorry to hear that @GlutesthatSalute . I do understand it feeling personal, and that changing your choices.

Please don't carry the feeling that British people ever thought badly of you. You were always welcome: a foreign-born spouse, and part of our society. You will be welcome again if you or your children come back.

Best wishes for your move.

I'm sorry to hear you are being impacted. It's really tough, and it probably will impact what people decide to do. The backlash over the earlier figures was pretty high and likely contributed to an electoral loss. I didn't feel that strongly about them, but I do think that level is unsustainable. It's really hard for those caught up in that personally though. I can see you were paying in to the system too.

@GlutesthatSalute "We legal immigrants who are paying the NHS Immigrant Surcharge currently at a rate of £1035 a year for imaginary services, "

That £1035 is peanuts.

The cost to the NHS for removing one of your DC's appendices would be £2,222. and that's just the surgery, not the nursing costs plus drugs and dressings and other aftercare..

The cost of removing your gall bladder would be £6719, again not factoring in the nursing care, drugs & dressings etc.

You're getting a bargain.

Yes, quite!

@strawberrybubblegum "We need to reduce the number of students going to university to do pointless degrees by improving non-University options."

You are singing off my hymn sheet.

We don't want people with Mickey Mouse degrees.

We want people with practical qualifications who can mend and fix items - , plumbers, bricklayers, electricians, guys who mend white goods, hairdressers, roofers, etc

Bring back apprenticeships !

Getting 50% of young people into university was such a blinkered, unthinkingly idealistic, one-size-fits-all leftie dream.

Someone who has barely scraped A levels won't benefit from further academic study.

They'll benefit from - and thrive at - a great apprenticeship or training which gets them into a well-respected, well paid, skilled job.

It is a betrayal of young people to funnel them into low quality degrees, leaving them with £10s of thousands of debt (and a poorer state due to loans not repaid) and no job opportunities.

I'm really not when I have not been able to see a GP since 2019- and that was in my own country, 11,000 miles from here. I have to pay again in order to get seen here privately. So I am not getting a bargain. I get stitched up for a service that I have never been able to access. HTH.

Nice words, I do mean that unsarcastically despite how it looks on paper, strawberry, but sadly not reflective of reality. Foreign spouses are NOT welcome here, and British citizens who marry foreigners are stranded in their tens of thousands in foreign countries unable to return home. All in an effort to keep down those bruising immigration figures. And the fact that it's your own citizens thus punished just does not matter.

I do see the real problems caused by unfettered immigration and particularly the lack of integration and assimilation here, but as usual, your government is targeting the wrong people.

@GlutesthatSaluteis it more the recent changes that are causing issues? With the ILR changing and just general uncertainty?

I do think some of Labour’s proposals will put off higher earners. As they will want certainty to start families etc

Interesting read..observer.co.uk/news/politics/article/is-britain-paying-the-price-of-having-the-worlds-costliest-work-visa-fees

I'm sorry to hear that's your experience @glutesthatsalute I'm the child of a British father and a foreign mother, and I've lived in both countries.

My mother naturalised when I was in my teens. Her professional qualification wasn't recognised - but I think that's improved now. And socially, I know she always felt welcome here. She always identified with her own country, of course!

As a child of 2 countries I find the UK much more accepting of us half-and-halfers than my other country is. I feel fully accepted as British here, and people find my heritage interesting not a negative. I spent a lot of my childhood here, which I think is what sets your feeling of 'home', but speaking to friends who did the opposite (same nationalities, spent more of their childhood in my other country) they feel far less accepted and 'at home' in the other country than I do here.

I'm really not when I have not been able to see a GP since 2019.

@GlutesthatSalute why haven’t you? Have all GP practices near you refused to add you as a patient?

Yes absolutely awful and why haven’t we upskiilled our own population in the first place. It maddens me so much

Yes no more of bringing in partners for this nonsense. Also taking the loan and defaulting needs to be stopped and some of the dodgy universities need to go