Settlement disagreements

Those who have written of the experience of drowning describe the moment when it becomes less horrifying to give in to the impulse to inhale, even when underwater, than it is to continue the struggle. There is an exquisite relief in that final reconciliation with fate. It is in that vein that we may now give up on the desperate, forlorn hope that Shabana Mahmood was ever going to stop the Boriswave getting ILR. 

Allies of the Home Secretary hinted that her proposed extension to the waiting period for Indefinite Leave to Remain from five to ten years is to be abandoned once Andy Burnham is in No. 10. This flagship policy was in any case already absent from her Immigration and Asylum Bill when it was introduced to parliament a fortnight ago. Late last week, Labour backbenchers wrote a letter calling for the proposals to be abandoned, as they alienated “progressive voters”, and represented a breach of trust with migrant workers who had come to Britain on the understanding that they would be eligible for ILR in most cases after five years, whereupon they can then seek full citizenship 12 months later. 

Mahmood’s original pitch was that she was going to extend the waiting period for ILR out to ten years, which meant that the Boriswave cohort of millions of new arrivals between the summers of 2021 and 2024 would not become eligible for ILR until after the 2029 election, giving us some hope that policy could be changed before this huge number of people began to make their presence legally permanent.  Having riled her left-wing colleagues sufficiently, she then smuggled in her “safe and legal” pathway for refugees, along with her “work and study” pathway for successful asylum seekers, which effectively meant that entering the country illegally became a cost-free roll of the dice for those who couldn’t qualify for a visa. 

But by the time her bill landed before parliament, the ILR extension had vanished. It was replaced by a toughening up of protocols on grounds and means for appeal against deportation, none of which look likely to survive their first appearance before the courts. The case of Shabir Ahmed, one of the most culpable and egregious of the rape gangs convicts from Rochdale, recently released from prison after serving 14 years of a 22 year sentence, has come along to provide the Home Secretary with an easy opportunity for posturing. She has announced that there will be a change to Section 7 of the 1971 Immigration Act in the cases of those who have committed the most serious types of offences. This theoretically opens the possibility of Ahmed’s deportation providing both that Pakistan accepts him back, and that Ahmed’s own lawyers cannot convince a British judge that his reprehensible criminal history means that his human rights are in jeopardy if he is sent back. 

Yusri Jabar, an Egyptian Cleric who has won a large and devoted following based on his blood-curdling anti-semitic rhetoric, will also provide the Mahmood with an opportunity to strike a tough pose later in the week, when she will have chance to deny him entry clearance for a speaking tour in Britain. Together, Shabir Ahmed and Yusri Jabar will give her sufficient political background noise to concede to her backbench colleagues’ demands, and formally drop the ILR extension for good. In any case, as one of her allies is reported in The Times to have said, “it’s all about the benefits” anyway, and she can buy her critics off with a gesture of extending the wait for access to benefits out to seven or eight years rather than automatically upon receipt of ILR at five years.  We can only speculate as to what this gesture will later be traded off against a few months down the line. 

It must be noted here that ILR is not “all about the benefits” — significant though the cost will be when that cohort does become fully eligible. ILR is the central component of Britain’s Home Affairs policy. Most importantly, ILR means that an individual has the right to sponsor visas for members of their family to come to Britain, and any children they have in Britain are automatically entitled to British citizenship from birth. They are also free to move to any kind of job regardless of the constraints of their visa category. Moving from one of a temporary visa pathway onto ILR represents the greater part of the shift, legally speaking, from migrant to regular status. It opens the door to citizenship and, once the application is duly made, the percentage of those with ILR who are denied citizenship is trivial. 

The letter from the Labour backbenchers, along with much of the commentary from the liberal media, was laced with the very peculiar assumptions about migration which the British system has internalised. Many of these strange ideas were reinforced in the aftermath of the Brexit vote — when Brexiteers conceded to some very radical principles while trying to defend the legitimacy of their project — as well as during the political fallout of the Windrush scandal.  

Firstly, there is the idea that the state has an obligation to guarantee stability and continuity of status to foreign nationals. This stems from the mythology that has been constructed around the idea that immigrants came to “rebuild” Britain after the Second World War, which remains persistent despite being ahistorical nonsense. In this view of the world, there is a covenant between an immigrant worker and the host nation, in which the right to permanent settlement is regarded as akin to a fair day’s pay. This harks back to the Ancient Roman military diploma, whereby provincials could acquire Roman citizenship after 25 years of service in the auxiliaries — and indeed, modern British pro-immigrationists do often talk about migrant workers as if they are veterans to whom civic honour is owed, with the NHS standing in for the army. 

Secondly, we have the notion that any time spent in the country, and even making the journey to Britain in the first place, amounts to the building of a life, the disturbing of which is fundamentally unethical. Following the Windrush scandal, stories of people who had spent years living normal lives over many years — working jobs, paying their rent and taxes, getting married and having children — were invoked to depict the individuals concerned not just as a meaningful part of the fabric of society (and in many cases they undoubtedly were), but as having gone above and beyond what is normally expected of a citizen — as if a life of idle criminality were the benchmark. The pro-immigrationist side is now applying the same principle to those who have only been here for a handful of years. Essentially, this approach means that anybody who gets into the country to do a job gets to stay forever. 

There are two problems with both of the above notions, in the context of modern Britain. Firstly, that they extend to migrants a degree of respect that the proponents have absolutely no intention of offering to the rest of the population. Neither the Government nor the Left more generally have any interest in ensuring regulatory stability or continuity, and are completely unsympathetic to the closure of family business or ancient schools if new taxes can’t be paid or new regulatory standards not met. They have absolutely no compunction at all about overturning people’s lives in the furtherance of their political aims, providing that those people aren’t immigrants. 

Secondly, they ignore the sheer numbers of people involved. We might take a compassionate approach on individual cases, but we are being asked to do so over a cohort of millions of migrants. The question of what happens to those already here is couched in explicitly moral terms, but never is that prism applied to the matter of inviting new arrivals in the first place and making promises to them about being allowed to stay. 

Nevertheless, these two ideas are to be found throughout Britain’s approach to immigration policy, including in the legislation itself.  Article 7 of the 1971 Immigration Act itself is an example of this. Finally forced into drafting a modern, universal immigration policy after the half-efforts of the 1962 and 1968 Commonwealth Immigration acts, the 1971 Act stopped the pretence that people from Commonwealth countries were a semi-detached category of British people. Yet, faced with the prospect that people who had been here for some time could ever be deported for any reason, the Heath government offered Article 7 as a get out, effectively grandfathering the rights of those already in the country at the time of implementation (two years after the legislation was passed). 

They want everyone to be allowed in — and then once they’re in, they insist they must be allowed to stay permanently

And it is because of these ideas that mainstream immigration restrictionists have stopped short of even considering retrospective changes to the position of those already granted settlement or citizenship. This principle has been a red line for Nigel Farage, and has accounted for the opening up of political space to Reform’s right. Once again, Shabana Mahmood is now forcing the Right to reckon with this principle — having done so previously only two weeks ago with the Refugee sponsorship scheme in her new bill. It has yet again been made clear, if there was anybody who still doubted it, that the left wing of the Labour Party, and their allies in the media, fundamentally reject the idea that the government has a right to impose any meaningful border policy. They want everyone to be allowed in — and then once they’re in, they insist they must be allowed to stay permanently. Predictably enough, the government is giving in to them. 

There will be many self-styled centrists and reasonable people, including on the centre-right, who insist that though Labour’s policies may be silly and regrettable, our commitment to decency and fair play means that we are obliged to accept the results. There is no such obligation, and both the Conservatives and Reform in fact have a duty to make it clear at this point that subsequent settlement and citizenship awards made prior to the next election will no longer be considered sacrosanct. This will allow individual immigrants to take an informed decision as to whether they make all of their plans contingent on staying in Britain permanently. Rather than a dereliction of principle, this will be a critical first step on the return to honesty and responsibility in migration policy, and away from reckless and irresponsible promises.