More than 300,000 children already living in the UK could be forced to wait 10 years for settled status under proposed changes to the Home Office’s “earned settlement” policy, according to an analysis by a centre left thinktank.
The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) found that nearly a quarter (23%) of the 1.35 million people already on routes to settlement are children, most of them dependants on their families’ work visas.
The findings come as Shabana Mahmood faces opposition from Labour MPs over changes to permanent settlement rights.
Ministers want to double the time it takes most migrant workers to qualify for permanent residence from five years to 10 years.
For people in below-graduate level jobs – including many care workers – the default will be extended to 15 years.
But about 40 Labour MPs have raised concerns about the impact of the proposals on migrants already living here, describing the retrospective approach as “un-British” and “moving the goalposts”.
Settlement, also known as indefinite leave to remain, gives a person the right to live, work and study in the UK and apply for benefits if they are eligible.
If applied retrospectively, the changes could penalise people who arrived under different rules and made life-changing decisions based on the expectations at that time. The thinktank claims the proposals would extend insecurity for families, with damaging consequences for integration, educational opportunities and child poverty.
Hundreds of thousands of children could now grow up without secure status, limiting their ability to plan for the future, the IPPR said. Delayed settlement could restrict access to higher education, student finance and stable employment opportunities later in life.
Parents could be locked out of the support their families need through restricted access to benefits, increasing the risk of child poverty among households on low incomes – including care workers and other essential roles.
At a minimum, IPPR is calling on the government to introduce a clear clause to protect those already on routes to settlement from retrospective changes.
Marley Morris, associate director for migration trade and communities at IPPR, said: “Families who were welcomed to the UK under one set of rules should not have the goalposts moved part way through their journey. It’s simply unfair to apply these rules retrospectively.
“For the 300,000 children affected, this is not an abstract policy change. They face growing up with prolonged insecurity, with many facing new barriers to going to university once they turn 18.”
Zayne, 18, who is on the five-year route to settlement but faces an extension to 10 years under the proposed changes, said: “My dad is an NHS doctor and chose to work in the UK because he believed in the rules and the promise of stability. He gave up better-paid work abroad, sold our house and car, and spent thousands doing everything right – only to be told, a month before we qualify, that the rules have changed.
“I’m 18 years old, I’ve worked hard for my A-levels, and I want to study medicine, but without access to student finance I simply can’t afford university here. My mum cries every day because our whole future feels like it’s been pulled away overnight.”
Labour MPs voiced their concerns about the proposals at a Westminster Hall debate on Monday.
Tony Vaughan, the MP for Folkestone and Hythe, said: “You cannot talk about earning settlement if you keep moving the goalposts after the game has started.
“In my view, retrospectivity is un-British and undermines our sense of fair play. It should be abandoned.”
The York Central MP, Rachael Maskell, said the government’s immigration reforms risked worsening the UK’s skills shortage. The “only place where this policy belongs is in the bin”, she added.
Mahmood told MPs at the home affairs select committee that settlement in the UK was a “privilege not a right” and it would be “odd” for the UK not to seek to attract the “brightest and best” people to work in the country.
She told MPs: “I think at five years that’s actually quite a short period before people can be permanently settled in the country with all of the benefits that that brings.
“I think it’s right therefore that we extend it. And in the range of proposals that we’ve set out there are some things that could help you bring that qualifying period down.”
