‘Kemi Badenoch’s Bold Plans to Fix UK Immigration Are Already in Place, Unworkable and Pointless’

This week, Kemi Badenoch set out what she called her bold plan to fix the UK’s immigration system.

In this video, Badenoch outlines five policies that she, with no sense of irony, describes as “different”. I don’t know whether Badenoch knows nothing about our immigration system or the policies her Government introduced, but everything she proposed is literally already in place or is unworkable and pointless.

Her first announcement was that migrants will have to wait 10 years before qualifying for indefinite leave to remain (ILR). This is already the case for the vast majority of migrants living in the UK based on family and private life, including parents of British children and people who have lived here for decades. This route was introduced in 2012 by, you guessed it, the Conservative Government. 

Over 218,000 people are currently on the 10-year route. The Government already takes a year to process even the most straightforward visa renewal applications. The last thing that they should be doing is placing more people on this route, which the Conservatives themselves recognised two years ago.

When Priti Patel was Home Secretary, the Conservatives briefly incorporated refugees into the 10-year route, meaning they would need to wait an additional five years before qualifying for ILR.

They quietly abandoned this in June 2023, recognising it had done nothing other than create more work for the desperately under-funded Home Office. Badenoch, though either hasn’t learned from this failure, or simply doesn’t care.

This path to settlement is brutal. Visas are issued for 30 months, meaning people must renew their visas at least three times before they qualify for ILR. If people apply even a day late, they are classified as a visa overstayer and the 10-year clock can reset. And people do routinely apply late, for all sorts of completely innocent reasons, such as mistakenly completing the incorrect application form.

My organisation, RAMFEL, is currently working with a man in this exact position. He was unable to find a legal representative when his visa was expiring so attempted to submit the application himself. He submitted one of the many online application forms ahead of his visa expiry, only to then be informed by the Government that he’d used the wrong form.

He therefore lost the right to work and access welfare/benefits, meaning he and his family have lost all income and now face homelessness. They’ve also been hit with a £12,000 bill from the Department of Work and Pensions for continuing to receive Universal Credit.

This brings us nicely to another of Badenoch’s policies: banning people who overstay visas from ever regularising their status. The gentleman described in the previous paragraph is now a visa overstayer. He is also the primary carer of his two British citizen children.

Badenoch’s proposal would see him stuck permanently in immigration limbo and unable to provide for his children, or would presumably see him removed from the UK for lacking status. I assume at this point, Badenoch would plan for the children to be taken into local authority care.

Badenoch also announced that to bring family members to the UK you’ll have to earn a high enough salary. She didn’t provide specifics, but in early 2024 her Government increased the minimum income requirement for a British spouse to sponsor a foreign partner from £18,600 per year to £29,000; this would have risen further to £38,700 had the Conservatives won last year’s election. 

Badenoch also announced that claiming benefits would bar people from securing ILR. This is a new policy proposal, but it is cruel, punitive, unworkable and impractical.

At RAMFEL, the vast majority of people we encounter work in lower income jobs, including as carers. Their wages aren’t enough to survive, especially when they are caring for British born children. They therefore receive in-work benefits. They already have to wait 10 years before qualifying for ILR, but Badenoch wants to prevent them ever securing permanent status.

The same people who care daily for the UK’s ageing population, and who Badenoch’s Government applauded during the COVID-19 pandemic, would be denied the right to ever secure permanent immigration status.

Aside from the cruelty of this proposal though, what would it mean in practice? These people would remain in the UK, caring for their British children and our sick and elderly. They’d just be permanently renewing visas, meaning they always faced the risk of submitting an application a day late and losing status.

What of the Home Office too? They are already massively overburdened and the last thing they need is many tens of thousands of people having to constantly make visa renewal applications that need processing.

The other new policy Badenoch announced was increasing the period before people can secure British citizenship. Currently, those on the 10-year route to settlement can become a British citizen 12 months after securing ILR. The whole process then takes 11 years, but Badenoch proposes increasing this to 15. The most obvious question here is: why bother?

There is no rational reason to make people with ILR wait a further period before naturalising. Badenoch does not even try to convince us otherwise. It is using a larger number to make it sound as though you are doing something, whilst in practice you are doing nothing. This tactic reflects the Conservatives’ record on immigration, and it is no surprise to see Badenoch continue this approach.

Creating sensible and humane immigration policies is hard work. What we saw from 2010 to 2024 was a Government fixated on appearing to do things, but not actually doing very much. Their policies never achieved their stated aim of reducing numbers, but they did make an already complex system far more complicated, both for the people living it and for the Home Office itself.

Labour leadership should not be intimidated at all when they watch Badenoch’s video. It is clear she has no sensible, let alone new, solutions, and also has learned nothing from the largely gimmicky (but cruel) policies her Government pursued.

This though presents a clear opportunity for Kier Starmer’s Government to set out a bold and ambitious approach, starting with capping settlement routes at five years and recognising that everyone actually benefits if people who have made the UK their home can access ILR more easily and swiftly.