Reform plans to scrap indefinite leave to remain for migrants

[Twiglets1]

BBC report following Farage's press conference this afternoon:

Reform UK has announced it would abolish the right of migrants to qualify for permanent settlement in the UK after five years, if the party wins the next election.

Under the plans, Reform would abolish the right of migrants to apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) - which gives migrants rights and access to benefits - and reapply for new visas with tougher rules.

Reform will also unveil plans to bar anyone other than British citizens from accessing welfare. The party claims their plans would save £234bn over several decades.

Reform said it would replace ILR with visas that force migrants to reapply every five years. That includes hundreds of thousands of migrants currently in the UK.
Applicants would also have to meet certain criteria, including a higher salary threshold and standard of English.

The announcement launches Reform's fresh assault on what they brand the "Boriswave" - 3.8 million people who entered the UK after Brexit under looser rules brought in by Boris Johnson's administration.

Speaking at a press conference, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said the "main reason" for the policy was to "wake everybody up to the Boris wave".

Hundreds of thousands of these migrants, who have come to the UK since 2021, will soon qualify for permanent residence under the ILR scheme.

Reform said the changes would not apply to EU nationals whose settled status is protected under the European Union Withdrawal Agreement, who make up the majority of benefit claimants by people with ILR.

But EU nationals not benefiting from the provisions of the Withdrawal Agreement will be subject to the new system.

Reform will also introduce a new scheme called Acute Skills Shortage Visas (ASSV) for jobs in crisis. Under the scheme, firms can hire one worker from abroad only if they train one at home.

Reform will also raise the average wait for UK citizenship from six years to seven.

Reform say their policy is designed to bring Britain into line with other countries such as the US and United Arab Emirates (UAE) and save the UK more than £234bn over what it calls the "lifetime of the average migrant".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c930xypxpqpo

In what way is it offensive?

Do you know what dog whistling is in a political context?

Fartage has long previous for it; see his ads during Brexit.

A really interesting read on this topic in The New World today:
https://www.thenewworld.co.uk/jonty-bloom-nigel-farages-economics-of-hate/

And @Bromptotoo, the writer also refers to his ‘dog-whistling’ tactics, so no matter how it offensive (!) it is for others to hear, it certainly needs to be called out for what it is.

Ummmm. No.

I've had ILR for over 30 years and have been voting in every election that's happened in that time. On the electoral role it correctly states my citizenship as non UK.

And fyi - no I'm not planning on applying to become a British citizen. I've thought about it in the past but it's been very much too expensive (£8k was the cost quoted to me a few years back) and when it was cheaper it would have meant me giving my passport to the UK government during the processing time of more than 6 months at a time when my father was seriously ill. I wasn't going to take the chance of not being able to visit him one last time or attend his funeral. Supposedly the process is much quicker and easier now but not the expense.

And even to get a visa can cost up to £1k. Imagine having to do that every 5 years for a family of 4.

If I recall correctly:

Commonwealth citizens can vote in UK General Elections as long as they are resident here, e.g. university students.

When the UK was in the EU, EU citizens could vote in European elections as long as they were resident here.

All ordinarily resident foreign citizens could vote in local elections.

If you were a Commonwealth EU citizen, you could vote in everything.

All this without ILR.

But in itself, ILR does not confer the right to vote in General Elections, e.g. if you're a USian with ILR you can't vote in GEs, you have to become a UK citizen.

Yes, but the residency is the key - which is part and parcel of ILR. So, just pointing out that these ILR migrants can vote, not that ilr confers voting rights specifically. And that accounts for a lot of our migrants.

The inference was that people with ILR would be excluded from voting against these measures at the ballot, and I was saying that doesn't apply to all.

Not as far as I’m aware, but happy to change my view if you have any evidence to provide that they are?

As far as I know, based on Straw’s recent article in The Times etc, his criticisms of the ECHR were entirely valid and in line with those being made in academic papers like the one that I referred to in an earlier post and his proposals to reform it were similar to those being discussed by politicians in other signatory countries (again, per my earlier post), i.e. to revise it to prevent misinterpretation in case law, which is what seems to have been causing most of the problems. Straw was expressing a sensible and nuanced view as far as I saw - highlighting the issues with the current system which were not anticipated when the ECHR was drafted and advocating rational revisions to it to address these specific issues.

Unlike Jenrick and Farage he wasn’t calling for it to be scrapped entirely and all human rights removed even from those who are UK citizens, at least in the article that I saw which he wrote and was published in newspapers.

I haven’t seen Brown’s comments on it. Was he advocating the removal of the ECHR in its entirety and the removal also of the Equality Act 2010 protections in UK law, as Jenrick and Farage have done?

Please provide links if it is the case and either Brown or Straw have expressed an extremist stance comparable to that espoused by Jenrick or Farage as I’d be very interested to read what they said, if you’re not simply making a false equivalence between people critiquing the genuine problems with courts’ interpretations of the ECHR and suggesting ways to resolve this, and those expressing extremist views who are instead using the issues with court interpretation of the ECHR provisions as cover for their stated desire to remove the rights and freedoms set out in the ECHR entirely, even from their own country’s citizens.

A lesson of tolerance? From someone supporting Reform?

I’m sorry that you don’t like long posts and can’t understand the impact of punctuation on the meaning of sentences, it must be a real struggle.

In this thread you have:

1. repeatedly made fabricated claims that I’ve written things that everyone can see I haven’t written;
2. sent personal insults to me and written personal insults about me to other posters;
3. repeatedly tried to project your behaviour onto me; and
4. continued to respond to my posts that were directed to other posters not to you despite the fact I’ve made it very clear to you that I don’t want to engage with your nonsense any further.

If you stop harassing me as you’ve done throughout the thread then you won’t have to struggle to read my allegedly “long” responses and I won’t have to keep telling you, yet again, to cease your boring and weirdly obsessive posts to me.

Yes, you're quite right. My brain went new labour titan and went to Gordon Brown, and it was David Blunkett. Write in haste and repent in leisure and all that.

Straw said we should decouple out law from the echr, not that full withdrawal is necessary but there should be a temporary suspension until it gets it's shit together, my words - not his. Blunkett takes a similar view.

And yes, obviously this isn't the same approach as Reform, although these interventions represent sizable movement on a previously untouched ground.

The Conservatives generally , not just Jenrick, look like they are moving closer to losing faith in the ECHR entirely -including Badenoch and Tugenhat. I think we'll see more of this at their conference.

Ahh thank you for the clarification, much appreciated. I hadn’t seen any comments from Brown! I do remember Blunkett’s comments and his frustration with the situation was palpable. I think Blunkett and Straw’s positions are both broadly reasonable and reflect the conversations going on in other signatory countries and amongst the judiciary also. In my personal view there would be some quite simple revisions that could be made relatively quickly to clarify the meaning of the ECHR provisions to provide guidance to courts on the limitations of interpretation, which would effectively “wipe the slate clean” in terms of case law and enable the ECHR to serve its intended purpose (very important for all of us!) while removing the vast majority of problems that are now arising from its implementation in ways that were unintended.

I also totally agree that this is a very different approach from that of the Conservatives and Reform, which I don’t see being advocated in other signatory countries, even those that already have quite right-wing Governments. The Conservative/ Reform position should be extremely concerning for all UK citizens: the policy of removing the UK as a signatory of the ECHR should be sufficient for any UK citizen who values their own rights and freedoms not to vote for any party advocating this. Once they’re gone, we won’t get them back. People died for us to have these freedoms yet, ironically, the very parties that are most vocal about freedom of speech and suchlike are precisely those proposing the steps that will pave the way for its destruction, and far worse. It’s doublespeak of the highest order.

Leaving the ECHR would not stop the boats.

You would be giving up your rights for a lie.

Absolutely.

I'm not giving up anything. There seems to be a determined effort to craft observations, here - that there is a push back against the ECHR across the political spectrum to varying degrees, into an accusatory presumption of desirability for the policy itself.

For clarity, I think that the ECHR has been employed in bad faith but I don't see that the baby needs to go out with the bathwater. But nor do I think that the opinion that it is beyond that point already, is inherently racist or a proxy for lobbying against all human rights.

And, I'm off for a while, so - I'm not being churlish when/ if anyone replies on the back of this post - just out.

Reforming/modernising the ECHR is an option.

Yes indeed and it seems that it would benefit from that.

I've had ILR for over 30 years and have been voting in every election that's happened in that time. On the electoral role it correctly states my citizenship as non UK.
Really?? I was pretty sure you would only be able to vote in local elections. My husband isn’t eligible to vote in a general ( ILR).
I am certainly not suggesting you try to get citizenship. My point was that people on ILR already do not have the same rights as citizens.
Additionally I find it interesting that Farage is proposing a policy that affects people who can’t vote against it. So it would depend on British Citizens to do that.

Commonwealth citizens who are permanent residents here are allowed to vote in general elections, whereas, for example, EU citizens who are permanent residents can only vote in local elections (and this was the case even when we were in the EU). The UK electoral system has many anomalies like this that distort it.

And yes, much like the Brexit referendum. Everyone who was a permanent resident and taxpayer here should have had a vote in that.

I am a non eu national with settled status under the European scheme (as i lived in germany while my british husband was a student in berlin 10 years ago). I could vote from the moment i came in 2016 (though i did live here from 2011 to 2014) on the initial 6 month residence visa. I now have a 2 month old British son.

Apparently the European settled status scheme wouldn't be abolished but I don't trust farage to not try his luck, even risking economic war with the eu.

Apologies. I can't remember your previous posts and can't reread them to check what you mean as they have been deleted by mumsnet. Presume for the personal attacks towards me. I didn't report them incidentally.

I know you say you don't want to engage with me.. but to stop engaging with me, you probably have to stop writing me long posts? Just a suggestion.

This model of working in UK no ILR is similar to Dubai immigration rules.. Nobody does protest to get ILR in Dubai. As long as you are working , you can live in Dubai . You work for 30 plus years in dubai , you still won't get any citizenship except for those who have Emirate connections

Nobody protests about this because they understand the rules when they move to Dubai with a work visa.

That’s why I don’t disagree in principle with the rules around ILR being changed to a 5 year work visa to make them more in line with what you see in other countries. There can still be a route to citizenship for those that qualify and want it.

The big flaw in Reform’s plan is the retrospective part. That is the part that will receive most criticism & legal challenges (rightly). Once someone has already gained ILR it seems harsh to remove that right to remain.

Not the point of the topic I know, but I’m not sure that Dubai is an ideal comparison and certainly not a model to follow, on many levels - it’s reported that over 80% of the population are immigrant workers and the human rights abuses and exploitation of many of those are well-documented. Unless, you’re just focusing on the ‘ex-pat’ community who are experiencing a very different lifestyle.

The retrospective issue does seem unfair but as @EasternStandard said early this Labour government was able to publish a White paper planning to retrospectively shift the goalpost to gaining ilr status from 5 year residency to 10 without raising an eyebrow - there was certainly no backlash that I recall and it was done around the same time as his Island of Strangers speech - which people looking to see if if passed the racist sniff test might call context.

I don't know why people are putting down their critical lens when one party does things that would ignite outrage from another. Is it that people are so trusting of Labour that this stuff doesn't invoke a shrug or would this retrospective sleight of hand be okay from other parties too?

I think there are pp who are very loyal to Labour. Maybe reliant on them too.

I don't know about other people but tbh I was unaware of the Labour government's White paper planning to move ILR status from 5 years to 10 years. I don't think there was much said in the media about this at the time so many people may have been unaware of it?

I also think it's way less controversial extending the length of time from 5 years to 10 years compared to saying some people who are already here would get deported. Yes it's hard for the individuals involved if they need benefits for example and can't access them for 10 years but it's not in the same league as having to leave a country where you and your family are already settled.