Sam Bidwell: The immigration slow motion car crash that is coming – and how to stop it
Sam Bidwell is Director of the Next Generation Centre at the Adam Smith Institute.
As the latest ONS figures show that incoming migration to Britain has topped 1.2 million for the third year in a row, it’s clear that the issue of immigration isn’t going away any time soon.
And even if the Government reforms rules for new migrants, Britain now faces the mother of all slow-motion car crashes.
After five years of settlement in the UK, migrants become eligible for Indefinite Leave To Remain, a status which gives holders the right to live and work permanently in the UK. It also gives those migrants the right to claim universal credit, use the National Health Service, apply for social housing, and bring dependents to the UK. After just five years of work, however low-skilled and low-paid, migrants are eligible for a lifetime of taxpayer-funded support from the British state.
With fiscal headroom already tight, millions of low-skilled migrants able to rely upon state support would create billions in fiscal obligations over the next few decades – as the OBR itself admits, the average low-skilled migrant labourer will cost the taxpayer £465,000 by the time they reach the age of 81.
According to migration guru Karl Williams at the Centre for Policy Studies, just 5 percent of all visas in 2022-23 were handed out to migrants likely to be net contributors – combine this shocking fact with the previous statistic, and it soon becomes possible to see how costs might balloon in the decades to come.
Fortunately, there is a wire that we can cut to defuse this ticking time bomb – using their powers under the Immigration Act 1971, a Home Secretary is empowered to change the immigration rules, including the criteria for ILR, with a simple statutory instrument. Provided that Parliament doesn’t register its formal disagreement, any changes are implemented forty days after the new rules are tabled.
Using these powers, the Home Secretary should instate emergency reform of the ILR system – as I argue in my recent piece for the Adam Smith Institute, which sets out an oven-ready legislative framework for these changes.
The five year rule should be extended to fifteen years, giving the Government ample breathing room to decide whether or not it wants to reissue visas to those who came to the country during the so-called ‘Boriswave’ of the past few years.
A carve-out for migrants from the EEA, the Anglosphere, and the ‘Asian Tiger’ economies would help to ensure that we don’t turn away high-quality, high-skilled migrants. These nationalities constitute less than 12 percent of total migration since 2021 – and are disproportionately likely to be highly-paid net contributors.
Finally, if it wants to show support for these reforms, Parliament could pass an emergency bill affirming the Home Secretary’s reforms, protecting them with a cast-iron ouster clause. In our increasingly litigious culture, one can never be too careful about the risk of judicial review.
This change is not only practically possible, but politically advantageous and morally just. After all, if our “open borders experiment” has been a mistake, then why should the British taxpayer suffer for decades to come?
Unfortunately, the Government is unlikely to implement these changes. If Starmerism is about process, then this proposal is the essence of anti-Starmerism – a suspension of the usual rules in pursuit of the public good. However, for the Opposition, this common sense proposal provides an opportunity.
At a time when trust on this issue is in short supply amongst the public, Conservatives should be doing everything that they can to prove their bona fides on migration.
Even if the Government is unlikely to adopt these proposals of its own accord, Shadow Ministers and Tory backbenchers alike could use the available mechanisms to table these proposed changes in Parliament. An open, public discussion on ILR reform would give Conservatives a platform from which to decry the mistakes of years past, and to demonstrate their commitment to doing things differently moving forward.
Just as importantly, it would put Starmer’s commitment to systemic reform to the test. If Conservatives don’t believe Starmer’s platitudes about addressing immigration, then they should force the Prime Minister to prove them right. If Labour votes these plans down, then they will have created clear blue water between Opposition and Government on the question of immigration.
If the Government accepts the plans, then we begin to get Britain’s mass migration crisis under control – and Conservatives get to claim the credit for proposing the solution. It’s a win-win for the Party, and could represent a genuine step towards solving this issue for the country.
Why not roll the dice?
This article (Sam Bidwell: The immigration slow motion car crash that is coming – and how to stop it) was created and published by Conservative Home and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Sam Bidwell
Featured image: kalkinemedia.com
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