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

But that didn't happen?

Unfortunately, I fear that you are correct in your suspicions. (But it'll be couched in layers of shifty language.)

Well without trying to make up things about a posters childhood that I know nothing about, I would have assumed that if parent goes back home, forced or not, the child goes with them, why wouldnt they?

Anyway, this is all hypothetical but you misread their post. They were implying the would have had a better childhood in their parents' home country, not here.

Probably right as well.

People who immigrated here in the Boris wave have to give up their pension contributions?

Will they get their taxes back?

Which parent? Or is breaking a family up just not really worth ruining through?

Many counties - the U.K. included - do not automatically offer settlement to spouses, even if there are dual national children involved. So which parent gets the kids: the deported one, or the remaining one?

That will include the Ukrainians who fled Russia’s invasion and the Hong Kong Chinese who fled China’s crackdown on democracy. So Farage is going to send them all back?

I was struck by this quote from his press conference today:

”Farage said he accepted the policy would split families and remove people integrated in their communities "but that's why we're giving people advance notice of what's coming"

Me “allow you to go”? I’m not the politician who is proposing deportations of long-term residents with UK spouses and children, am I? Your strange fantasies get weirder and weirder.

UK citizen children don’t get deported just because a parent is deported. Neither do nice immigration officers deporting one of their parents ask if the whole family would like some time to pack, organise new jobs and accommodation in the other country and extend an offer to the family of a nice relocation package so they can all fly together to settle in the other parent’s country. Neither, to my knowledge, is Mr Farage proposing any such thing.

He’s proposing that non-UK citizens who have lived in the country for many years and already have permanent residency rights have these revoked and will then be forcibly deported if they earn below an as-yet-unspecified salary threshold at the time of any 5 year interval because they will be forced to reapply for 5 year visas in perpetuity, even if they have never used the NHS or claimed a penny in benefits, and have a job, home, and a family who are UK citizens. They will never be allowed to feel secure in their status as permanent residents of the country which they have built a life in unless they apply for citizenship, which many cannot do without relinquishing the nationality of the country in which they were born. One hell of a risk that would be if Farage was in charge given the xenophobia he’s made a career of stoking and is ramping up further deliberately with these very policies.

It may not have dawned on you but in some cases the UK citizen families of those who would be deported under his policies may not be eligible to move to the country where the deported spouse/ parent was born, so Mr Farage’s policies would enforce many family separations on people who have been UK residents and law-abiding taxpayers for many years or even decades: spouses separated, children separated from their parents, purely to feed his supporters’ thirst for xenophobia.

He won't send the Ukrainians back because they are white like his women, or the HK Chinese because they speak English and are the right shade of brown.

He doesn't mind sending women back to Afghanistan and pay the Taliban for it , nothing suprises me anymore.

@drspouseYou seem oddly convinced that some foreign people will be safe. Once a scapegoat category is selected, why would anyone falling into it be spared by someone who is already ghoulishly looking forward to splitting up families?

It really is shocking. He’s not even making an effort to hide it and cloak it in a veneer of reasonable-sounding language anymore. Yet still there are posters here pretending that they didn’t understand what he said.

Do they pay NI during that 5 years? I've no idea.

Yes but I'm just replying to you with regard to your question about whether I would have had a better childhood in another country. Which I may have done? If it had happened..And then you asked about me liking my parents or not and whether I preferred to be without them living alone in another country. And I'm just trying to answer your questions about this scenario you made up about me in my childhood. Which didnt happen. So its hard to answer your questions.

Yes it's confusing but I'm doing my best here!

I didn’t ask you if you might have had a better childhood in another country. Again, you are making things up. 90% of your posts seem to be responses to an imagined conversation you’re having and things you have fabricated that nobody actually said. The other 10% have consisted of personal insults to other posters, some of which now seem to have been deleted. Tiresome and pointless.

People pay NI from the moment they start working in this country, yes. Immigrants are paying for British pensioners right now.

Do you realise lots if people cannot have double nationality some don’t want it and some cannot afford it .

You do turn things around, I'll give you that. 🤣

You said if my parent had been deported would that have improved my childhood. I said yes as my parent comes from a brilliant country. You said "you believe that one of your parents being deported would have improved your life. Do you not like your parent much?" And whether I'd have preferred to live in a different country to them. I said I was hoping I would have gone with my parent and not stayed alone like Olivia Twist. But as it was your made-up scenario and none of it happened, I didn't know if that was within your scenario that I went with my parent or stayed.

The words "imagined" and "fabricated" probably describe your posts better, I suggest.

That would assume they are working then and not on benefits. So I think under Reform's suggested rules, they would qualify for a visa if they earned over £40,000.

Mass immigration has been incredibly destructive, but this sort of policy is an over correction. It isn’t fair to change the rules retrospectively, maybe for new arrivals. It’s a good few years until they take over, policies change.

Most immigrants are working, yes. Unless they are retired, but as I’ve pointed out before retired immigrants are a drop in the pensions bucket. If you really want to go hard in on net “takers,” you’ll have to go after British pensioners. The pensions burden is very high, mainly because Britons didn’t have enough children to fund their pensions and benefits. Hence successive governments have been importing workers to prop up our elderly.

I don't think it's retrospective for those that already have ILR. It's for those that haven't yet got that status. I think that's what he said.

It's all hypothetical anyway. We've got Labour for 4 years so nothing will be done.

Speaking English seems a sensible requirement for someone on a working visa in England, I’m not sure why you’d take issue with that.

Ah ok, thanks.

Go after the public sector pensions. Stop giving well paid public sector workers huge payrises for no improvement. Their pensions can never be curbed anyway as it's the government's contractual obligation. And that's a huge burden on taxpayers.

Remove the triple lock.

That's what needs to be done. But won't be. So we will go bust eventually as Labour pile on the debt on our kids and grandchildren.

Nothing tp do with the 14 years the Conservatives were in charge? Brexit, Austerity?