Settlement Decision Due Next Week After Cabinet Objections
The home secretary is expected to put her final decision on settlement rules for legal migrants to Parliament in the coming week. Her proposal would double the wait for permanent residence from five years to ten, with some lower-paid workers waiting fifteen. It has drawn objections from inside the government.
The development is that social care workers already in Britain are now likely to be exempt from the longer wait, which removes the sharpest edge of the proposal. The contested part was never the length of the wait but whether it applied to people already here. The housing secretary, before she rejoined the cabinet, called the proposals “un-British” precisely because they would change the terms for those who came in good faith under the old rules. Most other workers would still need ten years, reducible for higher earnings or for contributing to their local community — a discretionary element that is where the argument moves next. Indefinite leave to remain is not a technicality: it confers the right to live, work and study without time limit and to claim benefits where eligible. The Home Office will say nothing until the decision reaches Parliament. Two cautions: all of this is briefed rather than announced, it rests on a single approved outlet, and she has said nothing on the record. The consultation drew 200,000 responses, and no start date has been given.