Reform UK recently sank to yet another new low in terms of immoral and unworkable policy nonsense. About immigration naturally.
Specifically, this is Nigel Farage’s recent decision where, should they ever have the power to do so, Reform UK will abolish the legislation behind and concept of the UK’s “indefinite leave to remain” scheme.
As the Guardian headline summarises it:
Farage vows to scrap settled status, placing thousands at risk of deportation
For context, the Indefinite Leave to Remain scheme allows long-term immigrants who have already lived in and contributed to the UK for a long time to gain a “settled” status. This gives them the right to remain in the country – to live, work and study for benefit of all involved. It’s a key pathway that migrants can pursue if they wish to eventually become full British citizens.
It is not an easy status to acquire. There are various different routes and criteria involved in getting it. The dominant requirement for most applicants is that they must have already legally lived and worked in the UK for at least 5 years by the time they apply. For example, you may have been here under a skilled worker’s visa.
Most applicants will also have to meet requirements around being able to speak and understand the English language as well as having enough knowledge of British history, culture and values in order to pass the “Life in the UK” test.
You must also be judged to have “good character”, which includes such things as not having a serious criminal record.
In summary: applicants must have integrated reasonably well to British life, and generally will be paying tax, and contributing in other ways towards the well-being of Britain and its citizenry as much as any native Briton does.
In short, these are the sort of immigrants the less rabid members of Reform might claim to value, or at least not to hate, not ti fear. After all, “it’s not about race” for them, right?
The ILTR group are then, by definition, not the hordes of (imaginary) small boat criminal masterminds that supposedly come to our shores intent only committing a violent crime-spree. They are perfectly legally compliant and well-integrated folk who happen to be of foreign but actively want to live in and contribute to the UK – and have shown over a period of several years that they can do so successfully.
In return Britain grants them a settled status so that they can go ahead and live their life, the same as the rest of us want to, safe in the knowledge that the roots they put down in this country – their homes, family life, children, spouses, jobs, community activities et al. – will not be cruelly ripped away from them at some point in the future due to a loss of employment, their visa expiring or an idiot somehow landing the Prime Ministership.
But that’s not good enough for Farage et al.
He has decided that – should he get the power to do so – he is going to abolish the very concept of indefinite leave to remain. There will be no such thing. If you happen to have been born abroad then you will always and forever need a constantly renewed visa if you wish to live in the UK, irrespective what benefits you are actually bringing to the country.
You can never really settle down. You could never dare wholly dedicate your work or personal life to our nation, because there is no reason not to worry that someone will decide you have to leave the country – and the life you have prospectively built up for yourself and your family over the past few decades – next year, next decade, or sometime beyond that – with no justification required, no right of appeal.
Most cruelly, most unfairly, this change would not only apply to new applicants. He wants to remove it after the fact from all our existing valued and beloved neighbours who already have been granted indefinite leave to remain. The doctor in your town who’s been your GP for the past decade, the newly-weds down your street with their young children who have never known another country and any number of other indescribably cruel and self-defeating scenarios.
Farage demands then that their “indefinite” leave has an definite end date. He aims to burn the rule book, to destroy what remains of any sense of “British” fair play – all to further fragment the country in the name of his own personal riches and power.
These are the folk that our country already gave its promise to that they can live, work, study, settle down, form families, start businesses and otherwise enrich the life and culture of their fellow citizenry.
This likely includes categories of folk that have been specifically invited to settle in the UK for various reasons:
He left open the possibility that families in the UK could be broken up and that Ukrainians and Hongkongers who moved here using special resettlement routes could have their rights to remain revoked.
Sure, these people could in theory continue, for the rest of their lives, to apply for visas to stay, but these will come with fresh new conditions such as you having to have a salary of at least £60,000. This is way above the average salary in the UK, which is around £37,000 for full-time employees; i.e. unachievable by most people irrespective of where they happened to be born.
It’s certainly unachievable by many of the immigrants that currently work trying to prop up our critical National Health Service, literally saving the lives of some of us day in, day out.
Per LondonCentric, interviewing a NHS psychologist about the plans:
When asked about Reform’s plans, Trinity told London Centric: “It seems like there’s a strict salary cap, but if you work for the NHS you don’t normally meet those caps, which is why you have health and care visas. It’s not clear to me that there would be any clear route for me to stay as an NHS worker who is in a lower income band.”
Even if you did pass these conditions, you would have your ability to access national health or social security services taken away from you. There would be new rules governing with or not your spouse or other family members may come along. You would also have to give up any other citizenship you have.
From the Guardian:
Reform said anyone who had indefinite leave to remain would have it rescinded – and would need to reapply for a visa – throwing the lives and status of many families into uncertainty.
There are some further problems with the scheme, even aside from its abject unfairness and immorality.
Remember Brexit, the disaster that was successfully campaigned for most strongly by Reform’s leader, Nigel Farage? Well, any EU citizens settled here are probably protected by the Brexit deal, so his new rules can’t apply to them. And that’s apparently 60% of folk with settled status.
Plus, despite the constant inflaming of tensions online and in our media, the abolishment of this sort of scheme is actually rather unpopular within UK public opinion.
The NatCen panel asked a question last year regarding when British people thought migrants who work and pay taxes in the UK should start being able to access the same welfare benefits as other UK citizens.
Even the majority of folk who held negative views on immigration thought they should be able to do so after 5 years, which is what the current ILR scheme enables.
Only 3% of respondents thought it should never be possible, which is what Farage is proposing.
97% of the country realises how unreasonable Farage’s policy is.
Even among those who agree with Farage that migration has been economically harmful, only one in ten would favour permanently excluding migrants from the welfare system. Opponents to this proposal will substantially outnumber supporters even among Reform’s existing voter base.
Yougov also recently surveyed people specifically regarding indefinite leave to remain.
Sure, Britons were split around 44:43 regarding supporting vs opposing the granting of indefinite leave to remain in general (13% ‘don’t know’). This is presumably looking forward to future applicants.
When it came to the question of whether the people who have already made the effort to earn the right to stay should suddenly have it removed from them, most people oppose it. Less than a third of of people would actively approve of that.
Less than half of even the people who would support the ILTR law being abolished in general would support the rights already granted being taken away from those who were already promised that they qualified for it forever.
It’s not only members of the public in general that are against Farage’s plans. Many organisations are virulently opposed to it too.
The people swept up in these potential mass deportations include many of those who work in the NHS, caring for us all in the UK. The general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing seems understandably both disgusted at the idea of it and concerned for what it would mean for the future of the British National Health service, saying:
Threatening to sack thousands of migrant nursing staff is abhorrent beyond words. These are people who have come to the UK to care for patients and become part of our communities. They deserve so much better than this.
The policy of retrospectively removing people’s rights in this way would be unprecedented, leaving migrant nursing staff unable to work or access welfare, despite having paid tax. It shows neither compassion nor an understanding of the fundamental role our brilliant migrant nursing staff play in health and care. Without them, services would simply cease to function.
Workplace related organisations are not the only people reacting negatively.
The Labour party chair, Anna Turley, elucidates how, in line with most other big Reform “policy” announcements, it seems it hasn’t been thought out at all:
Reform have been forced to admit that their policy does not apply to people from the EU – destroying Farage’s claims that it covers all foreign-born nationals. Farage is unable to say how many families his policy would break up, what the cost to businesses would be, what would happen to pensioners and how long it would take to implement
The Mayor of London:
Threatening to deport people living and working here legally is unacceptable
The leader of the Lib Dems:
Nigel Farage has not clearly thought this through. He has not worked out the impact on red tape or on taxes. He has not realised that lots of these people have made their lives here, contributing to businesses, to the health service
The SNP’s deputy Westminster leader:
…desperate and despicable
The (Conservative) shadow home secretary:
half-baked and unworkable
The directory of the British Future thinktank:
Threatening to revoke the settled status of millions who already have indefinite leave is morally wrong, beyond the legal and practical chaos it would cause – it undermines the very idea of belonging in this country
A senior partner at a law firm shows how this policy, coming of course from Reform, a party packed with fake patriots, would likely make the country poorer:
This policy, Barrett-Brown said, would dissuade “skilled workers, CEOs and scientists” from moving to London: “It would also have a financial impact in terms of tax intake… It’s all predicated on the notion that they think everyone who gets indefinite leave is on benefits, but, in reality, they are actually overall net contributors.”
and is anyway sceptical that they could even implement it:
However, Barrett-Brown cast doubt on whether Reform would actually be able to deport people en masse. “There would be so many legal challenges, that it would really affect their ability to implement it,”
And once again the whole policy is based on at best inaccurate figures. Surface level quantitative sounding “cost savings” in an attempt to appear more frugal than racist that, yet again, turn out to be built on quicksand.
Reform claimed this move would save £230 billion. Unsurprisingly, given Reform’s history of financial deception and incompetence, this figure is seemingly based on a report which even the people who authored it said shouldn’t be used.
Reform’s central claim that the move would save £230bn was called into question when it emerged that it had been sourced from a Centre for Policy Studies report whose authors said the figure “should not be used” because it was based on erroneous data.