UNHCR Slams UK Plan Making Refugees Wait up to 30 Years to Settle

The United Nations refugee agency has taken aim at the UK's new settlement rules, telling the Guardian the plan to make refugees wait as long as 30 years before they can apply to stay permanently "raises significant concerns." UNHCR, which carries international responsibility for refugees, called the longer qualifying period "likely to be detrimental." The criticism lands days after home secretary Shabana Mahmood unveiled the strategy.

Mahmood's announcement mixed a concession with a crackdown. Care workers got a carve-out letting them apply for indefinite leave to remain after five years. But people who arrived by irregular means, including small boats, face the maximum wait of up to 30 years before they can apply for settlement. A 10-year penalty applies to those who came on small boats or hidden in lorries rather than through safe and legal routes.

There is a small escape hatch: refugees can shave down that upper limit by entering work or study. But the government has sharply reduced safe and legal routes, and UNHCR noted that the routes it has announced will only be open to a small minority of people seeking sanctuary. The agency welcomed those new routes even as it warned the overall package could backfire.

UNHCR framed the stakes bluntly. It said the extended qualifying period raises concerns "particularly when considered alongside the introduction of short term stay arrangements and changes made last year that would preclude many from ever accessing citizenship." Taken together, the agency said, the measures are likely to damage refugees' sense of security, belonging and stability, and their ability to contribute to their new communities. "Refugees are not migrants," it added, noting that safety means more than a grant of asylum.

Kamena Dorling, director of policy at the Helen Bamber Foundation, said she was "deeply alarmed and disappointed" by the "earned settlement" announcement. She warned it will cause profound and lasting harm to refugees, including survivors of torture and trafficking, and said the government had ignored extensive evidence against the policy. Dorling called extending the qualifying period "simply inhumane."

Dorling also argued the tough rules won't stop people from coming. With legal routes so limited, she said, people fleeing war and persecution will keep taking desperate measures to reach safety — and those already recognised as refugees will face decades of uncertainty, insecurity and fear.