Great Britain plans to strengthen the rules on how migrants can permanently settle by having the company proven their value, in particular by having a “high level” of English, the Minister of the Interior, Shabana Mahmood, said on Monday.
The plan is the government’s last effort to lower the growing popularity of the British populist reform party, which led the debate on the fight against immigration and the Labor Party of Prime Minister Keir Starmer to harden its policies.
Most migrants can currently request “indefinite leave to stay” after five years of life in Great Britain, a status which gives them the right to live permanently in the country.
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In his first speech at the Labor Party Conference as Minister of the Interior, Mahmood said that the government was planning to make changes so that people are eligible for this status that if they pay contributions to social security, have a clean criminal record, do not claim services, can speak English and have a volunteer file in their communities.
The right to settle must be won
“The time spent in this country alone is not enough,” said Shabana Mahmood. “You must gain the right to live in this country.”
A consultation on the proposals will be launched later this year, she said, and this is based on the government’s previous announcement that this standard qualification period would be changed to a 10-year basic line.
Mahmood said his plans meant that some people who live in Britain for more than a decade could still be refused permission to remain permanently if they do not meet new standards.
The anti-immigration reform of Nigel Farage, which directs opinion polls, said last week that it was planning to remove “indefinite leave to stay” and replace it with a five-year renewable work visa.
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Starmer accused the reform Sunday of planning a “racist policy” of mass deportations, although he clarified that he did not think that the supporters of the reform were racist.
Lawyers have said that new requirements could discourage some people who move to Britain and demand that people volunteer would be difficult to assess.
Mahmood told the conference that she was ready to be unpopular to stop the arrival of tens of thousands of people on small boats in Europe.
“We will have to question some of the hypotheses and legal constraints that lasted a generation and more,” she said. “Without control, we simply do not have the conditions in which our country can be open, tolerant and generous.”
Immigration has long been one of the most important questions for voters in Great Britain. Control of the number of arrivals was a key factor in the 2016 vote to leave the European Union, but net arrivals reached record levels after Great Britain left the block.
