Migrant people in the UK have told openDemocracy of becoming depressed, receiving racial abuse, and struggling to reassure their children of their safety after home secretary Shabana Mahmood proposed wide-ranging changes to immigration rules.
Earlier this year, Mahmood announced plans to double the time it takes for migrant people to receive indefinite leave to remain (ILR) and redefined the right to settle in the UK as a privilege to be earned.
Under the previous system, the vast majority of people could apply for ILR after five years of continuous residence in the UK (with a 10-year ‘safety net’ path for those who didn’t meet the five-year path’s English language criteria or £29,000 income requirement, for example).
Now, a 10-year route to settlement will be the norm, while those who have claimed state benefits or are on low earnings will have to wait even longer to apply. Those who do not earn more than £12,570, such as stay-at-home parents and other family carers, will be blocked from applying altogether.
Meanwhile, the five-year route will be open only to those who have earned annual salaries of at least £50,270 for three years, and a new three-year route will be introduced for those earning more than £125,140. The median gross annual full-time earnings were £39,039 in April 2025, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Mahmood’s plans will also allow applicants to reduce their total wait time by one year by proving they can speak a high level of English, or by three to five years by volunteering.
The government says all of these changes to the settled status policy will apply even if a person came to the UK under the previous rules. While that policy is still under consultation, asylum-seeking people are already seeing their rights restricted under a different update to immigration rules made this month.
As of 2 March, people who are granted asylum or humanitarian protection in the UK receive permission to stay for 30 months, rather than the previous five years. Their claims must be re-assessed more regularly; if, after 30 months, they are assessed as no longer being at risk in their country of origin, they will be expected to return.
Labour MP Olivia Blake told openDemocracy that the government’s plans are “problematic” and urged Mahmood to reimagine the policy from an angle of “promoting integration”.
We also spoke to a range of migrant people and migrant rights workers to find out how they are being impacted by the new rules, including four people who attended a lobby for migrant rights in Westminster, organised by the charity Praxis. Here are their stories.
Peggy*, a mum of a disabled child who is on the 10-year route
When I heard the news, I went into a depression. My heart is broken into pieces. I had some health problems, and this has tripled those issues.
I have followed every protocol. I haven’t committed any crime. I have diligently done what the government said to be on the 10-year route. And now, because my son has a disability, the government is saying you can’t have the right to stay, because you claimed benefits, you must wait another 10 years.
The benefits I am receiving are for my son. It is not easy having an autistic child. Everything I do, I invest in my son. I have to take care of my son. They are punishing mothers, and they are punishing children. I look at my children, and I ask myself, how are they going to live?
The government needs to sit down and think about how these proposals are affecting millions of lives, including children. These are children who are born here. Don’t punish them because of who their mums and dads are.
We worked hard to put food on the table, to care for our children, and now you are telling us that we have to wait longer for our ILR. This is not fair. They are taking away our freedom. We need our freedom back.
Kingsley, a cancer patient on the 10-year route
I came to the UK when I was in my twenties; now I am 60. For most of this time, I was undocumented, and two and a half years ago I got my papers to be on the 10-year route. But for the last 18 months, I have really struggled to find work. I have cancer, it is like living with a ticking time bomb. Now I am worried that because I have claimed benefits, I will have to wait another 10 years to get my status. I do not want to claim benefits; I want to work.
The government needs to let people work. When you do not have the right to work, you end up working for cash in hand, you end up working illegally. People end up living in inhumane conditions: sleeping 10 people in a room, and no one can complain because you fear that if you say something, you will be chucked out of the country. It is creating desperation. But if we have our status, then we can work, we can pay taxes.
It causes people a lot of stress, and stress is the biggest cause of illness, which then puts pressure on the NHS. The government is not thinking about all the impacts of its plans.
Nat*, a mum on no recourse to public funds [a visa condition that denies people access to public funds such as state benefits]
I am on the route to settlement as a parent dependent visa and I am just a few months away from getting indefinite leave to remain on the 10-year route. Now I don’t know what is going to happen. If the changes come in before that, will I have to renew again??
My oldest daughter is aware of what is going on. I try to reassure her, but deep down, I don’t know if we are going to be ok. The process to settlement is long, it’s draining, it’s expensive, and we had an end in sight; we had six months left. To have that taken away, and not know what the new end goal is… I don’t have the words.
Families with no recourse to public funds always have the best-behaved and best-dressed children, because they don’t want to draw attention to themselves. They worry that if their children are sick and miss school, for example, then they will be reported to immigration. We live with this constant fear. A fear of stigma, a fear of being judged. There's a fear that if I say something, does that affect my immigration status? Everybody is silently suffering.
No one sees how I am struggling. You see me as a normal person, but you don’t see how I am struggling inside. Nobody sees the tears that we are crying and hiding from our children, from our colleagues. Because we don’t feel safe to share that emotion.
Kasey*, a clinical lead at a care home, on the health and social care visa
I became a care worker after caring for my grandmother when she had dementia. It reminds me of her, it’s a way to honour her and her legacy.
The new rules are not clear when it comes to care workers. Doctors and nurses in the public sector could still qualify for settled status after five years, but it’s not clear yet whether this applies to workers in private care homes. [In fact, research published by the House of Commons library suggests care workers will be unable to apply for settled status for at least 15 years.] It is creating a lot of instability.
There are already big staff shortages in the care sector, and these changes will create greater staffing pressures. We were called here because we are needed, because people need care, and we came here legally. We're law-abiding citizens. We pay taxes, we pay our national insurance, we pay council tax. We strive and work hard to be able to contribute to the community, especially in the industry we work in. So it's not fair, and it’s not fair that it is being implemented retrospectively, because people arrived here believing that they would get settled status after five years.
I feel unsafe. My colleague was waiting for the bus in her nurse’s uniform, and a group of teenage boys told her to go home, to get back on her boat. But this is our home.
Nandi*, in the UK on the health and social care visa
I came to the UK in 2022 and worked for a care company that was basically abusing its employees, forcing us to pay back some of our wages so that we were on minimum wage, despite the Home Office stipulating that we received £10.10 per hour. We would receive notes telling us how much we owed the employer each month.
The company then moved us all onto zero-hour contracts, which was against the Home Office rules. I refused to sign the new contract, and so did my colleagues, and we got the union involved. The company backed down, but the revised contract put me at a disadvantage as I did not have a UK driving licence. They started paying us late, and I never got any bank holiday pay. I decided to blow the whistle on their behaviour. I was anonymous, but they realised I was the one who had complained and started to victimise me, for example, by changing my shift times and locations, and then blaming me when the managers shut the company down. In fact, the company went into liquidation due to an issue with HMRC.
I am now trying to find a new sponsor, but it’s hard and the immigration rule changes are making it harder. I want to work; I need to earn money to support my family back home.
When I first came to the UK, I understood that I would get settled status in five years. Now it is 10 years. [As a care worker, it may actually be 15 years before Nandi can apply.] Why didn't they say it before? Then people would have made better choices. The choices we made were based on what we were promised.
Olivia Blake, Labour MP for Sheffield Hallam
The biggest concern I have is with the retrospective element of the rule changes, which means that people who came here trusting they would get indefinite leave to remain after five or 10 years now have to wait for longer. I am also concerned about the impact on people who have no recourse to public funds and are only just getting by.
The government frames the changes as being about people’s contribution. I find this concept problematic, particularly concerning women, carers and single mothers. If you are raising your children because you can’t access free childcare with no recourse to public funds, that caring isn't recognised as a contribution when it should be. I spoke recently to someone working in the creative industries on a low wage, but who created 100 jobs for a project in their community. That is contributing, and yet it’s not recognised as such.
My constituents are incredibly worried and disheartened. They feel a sense of betrayal. People who chose to come here, to work and raise their families, to contribute to our communities, are now being told we don’t want you.
There are many things we could be doing differently. I have called for a Safe Access visa, which would create safe and legal routes for people seeking asylum. I also think we need to see investment in training, such as English lessons, and expanding the right to work. These are steps that promote integration.
Emily Payne, a senior care coordinator, and Natasha Smyth, a clinical psychologist at Freedom from Torture.
Natasha: We would expect survivors of torture to experience profound anxiety and a resurgence of trauma symptoms that many had begun to move beyond. The prospect of having their need for protection reviewed every 30 months means they will never be able to achieve the psychological safety that is a prerequisite for recovery.
We must be very clear about what these reviews will mean for survivors: being required to relive the worst experiences of their lives – torture, persecution, unimaginable violence – every 30 months, even after sanctuary has been granted.
For some survivors this policy would likely increase an existing sense of not belonging coupled with a renewed sense of injustice at not only having been tortured and persecuted in their home country but now having to face years of being treated differently because they have had the misfortune of having to flee for their safety. Survivors often tell us that no matter what they do to try and achieve a ‘normal life’ it always feels like they are faced with overwhelming new challenges. This causes a sense of despair and hopelessness and we would expect that this new policy will contribute to this.
Emily: Clinically, we are concerned that such a short period of refugee leave and more regular reviews of the ongoing need for protection will make meaningful rehabilitation nearly impossible – trauma recovery requires safety, security and stability.
Survivors who have experienced sexual torture face particular vulnerabilities under this policy – the prospect of having to repeatedly recount and reprove the most intimate and devastating violations they have experienced is not just distressing but deeply retraumatising. This will risk undoing significant therapeutic progress and causing serious harm.
For many, an asylum system already defined by delays perpetuates the experience of persecution. Too often, policy changes are discussed in the context of data, figures and statistics that fail to recognise those affected as human beings. The only difference between those who make the legislation and those it affects is the chance of where they were born.
Dr Dora Olivia Vicol, CEO of the Work Rights Centre
It is a myth that these radical settlement changes are needed to ensure that migrants contribute and integrate. The evidence shows that most people coming to the UK today are already working and positively contributing to our public finances, integration is already happening, migration is going down and it is projected to continue doing so.
These proposals will not make communities more cohesive. They just risk creating an underclass of people trapped in temporary status for decades, tied to their employers and at high risk of labour exploitation, all while raising costs for decent UK businesses, and throwing the health and care sectors into crisis.
We urge this government to abandon these harmful proposals, honour its promises to people who have already sacrificed so much to work in the UK, and pursue immigration reform that is fair and just.”
*Names changed to protect identity
