UK doubles settlement wait for migrants, with some facing 15 years

The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, will put sweeping new settlement rules before MPs on Monday. The standard qualifying period for indefinite leave to remain would double — legal migrants would wait 10 years instead of five. Workers in occupations below graduate level, care workers among them, could be made to wait 15 years.

There is one expected soft spot. Ministers are likely to carve out an exemption for care workers already in the UK, following cabinet pressure led by the housing secretary, Angela Rayner. Other professions would still swallow the long waits. Mahmood has floated shortening the clock for migrants who rack up community contributions through a points-based system, or who earn more.

The Guardian reported in July that the prime minister was weighing an exemption for hundreds of thousands of care workers to ease strain on social care. The Home Office has handed out roughly 200,000 health and care worker visas over the past five years, plus many more to their dependants. Under the original consultation, the standard wait would double, and below-graduate roles faced the 15-year tier subject to proposed exemptions and reductions.

On the eve of the response, a coalition of MPs and campaigners fired off a letter to Mahmood and the health secretary, Yvette Cooper, seen by the Guardian. They call the proposals an iteration of Windrush-era policies and urge ministers to stop history from repeating itself by scrapping them, or at minimum bolting on safeguards. Signatories include Labour MPs Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Diane Abbott, Clive Lewis and Rachael Maskell, Green MPs Ellie Chowns, Carla Denyer, Siân Berry and Hannah Spencer, plus groups such as the Work Rights Centre, Action for Race Equality, Care England and the Society of Radiographers.

The Windrush scandal, exposed by Guardian reporting in 2017, saw mainly Black Britons wrongly detained, deported and cut off from work and essential services despite having every right to live in Britain. The letter's signatories say rules changed under people who built their lives around existing requirements are unfair and could push essential workers out of the country. They warn exemptions may not reach staff at independent health and social care providers, or workers' family members, and point ministers to Wendy Williams's Windrush Lessons Learned Review.

The political heat has been building for months. Rayner called a 15-year wait for care workers already in Britain un-British in June. In September, the energy secretary, Miatta Fahnbulleh, said the plans would have been tough for her family, who arrived as refugees. Signatories argue the health and care sector is already dangerously under-staffed, and that without international workers, services contract and unmet need climbs — awkward math for a government chasing NHS waiting-list and cancer treatment targets. Launching the consultation, Mahmood framed permanent settlement as not a right but a privilege that must be earned.