Mahmood scales back care worker rules

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced Monday that foreign care workers earning over £25,000 yearly would wait five years for permanent settlement, down from her initial 15-year proposal.

High earners get faster path to residency

High-earning foreign workers can now apply for indefinite leave to remain after five years. Most other migrants must still wait ten years for permanent settlement.

Economist calls savings claim nonsense

Jonathan Portes, former chief economist at the Cabinet Office, said the £10 billion cost-saving figure was misleading because it ignored migrants' future pension and health claims after ten years.

True savings are just £575 million

Portes calculated the actual savings at £575 million, just six percent of the Home Office estimate, exposing the initial claim as fundamentally flawed.

Migrants contribute £115 billion over lifetimes

Institute for Public Policy Research analysis showed migrants due to settle in the UK would make a net lifetime contribution of around £115 billion through taxes, including skilled workers now facing ten-year waits.

Policy now has no rationale, Portes says

Portes claimed the plan backfired by targeting migrants who generate the most money for the public purse, leaving the government with neither economic nor political justification.

“The government never had a convincing rationale for this policy except to a Reform-lite version of anti-immigration policies, and hence once they started to try and justify it on grounds of economics and cost the whole thing just collapses into complete incoherence.”

Refugees face 20 to 30-year settlement waits

Mahmood also announced refugees arriving by small boat must wait twenty years for settlement, rising to thirty years if they do not enter work or study.