Increasing qualifying time for ILR would increase the risk of poverty and exploitation, the MAC warns

After the shock announcement in the immigration white paper in May, the government spent the summer determined to restrict migrants’ routes to settlement and citizenship.

Despite the vocal opposition of migrant communities, faith leaders, and members of the Green and Liberal Democrat parties, the government plans to increase the qualifying time for Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) from the current five years to 10 years, and is considering ways of making migrants 'earn' citizenship - as if the years of contributing to the UK economy, society, and tax coffers were not enough. 

It was with some satisfaction that we watched the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) tell the Home Affairs Select Committee (HASC) in unequivocal terms: restricting ILR would be a gamble with no clear benefits for UK citizens, while increasing the likelihood of poverty and exploitation for migrant communities. As for the government’s ambition to further reduce migration, the MAC explained this is a political choice with serious economic risks - and the temporary shortage list is unlikely to fix this conundrum.

Increasing qualifying time for ILR: a gamble with migrants’ lives

The government’s proposal to restrict eligibility for ILR rests on a shaky evidence base. We don’t have data on the fiscal impacts of giving people ILR, Dr Madeleine Sumption, Deputy Chair of the MAC, told the cross-party committee; “we have no idea how much they earn; how that varies between different groups; how many people are claiming benefits; or what the overall fiscal impact is of people with indefinite leave to remain”. 

On the surface, asking migrants to wait longer before they can acquire settlement rights would extend their No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) condition, meaning they would be ineligible for benefits for longer, and lead to them paying more fees. But as Professor Brian Bell, MAC Chair, highlighted, any fiscal gains could be undermined if the change in policy puts high-earning migrants off from coming to, and paying taxes in, the UK.

There is a real risk that changing routes to ILR backfires: fiscally and socially. People may not necessarily leave, as the government desires, but continue to live in the UK in greater poverty, and with an extended risk of exploitation. Professor Bell echoed our concern with the risk of exploitation inherent in employer-sponsored visas: “If someone is tied to a visa, they have less power in the labour market”. 

There is also a question of unfairness. Professor Bell prompted the attending MPs to consider: at what point does it start to become unfair to require migrants to pay taxes, double tax them on the NHS, and contribute to services they are ineligible to benefit from? As for the impact on businesses, asking firms to keep paying the immigration skills charge after the first five years would be “extraordinarily unreasonable”.

The economic tradeoffs of reducing migration

If the change to settlement routes is the biggest concern for migrant communities, it was apparent from the HASC’s line of enquiry that for the government, the priority remains reducing immigration.

“There is no single policy lever to bring down overall migration”, Dr Sumption told the committee, but it seems the government is determined to pull at every lever it can find, regardless of consequences. 

Net migration halved from 860,000 in 2023 to 431,000 in 2024, and continued to fall throughout 2025, according to a report by UK in a Changing Europe. This has been largely driven by a sharp decrease in migrants coming from non-EU countries to work or study in the UK, and analysts expect these figures to decline. And yet, the government wants to go further. 

Pressed by Chris Murray MP to consider how the government could continue its goal to reduce migration, Professor Bell laid out a significant conundrum: the routes the government can most easily control, are the ones that are the most economically beneficial to the UK. It is relatively easy for the government to restrict work or student visas, but because these migrants contribute most through paying taxes, NHS surcharges, and providing essential labour, the tradeoffs are significant. 

Take the government’s decision to end international recruitment under the Health and Care Worker visa. Without substantially raising wages in the care sector, Professor Bell argued, care work will remain unattractive to domestic workers, who will nearly always be able to earn more working in a supermarket. The question is: ‘If you don’t want international workers to come in to do minimum wage care work, who will?’ and if the honest answer to that question is: ‘no one’, then the result can only be the rationing of care to elderly and vulnerable people.

Training and a temporary shortage route won’t square the circle 

To some extent, the government tried to square the tension between the political imperative to reduce migration and the economic need to plug labour shortages, by announcing more investment in training domestic workers, and concessions for migration into certain low and medium-skilled jobs, added on a temporary shortage list. Unfortunately, neither are guaranteed to work quite as intended.

While training is welcome, and indeed the UK falls behind countries in the EU in training budget, Dr Sumption explained this will not, in and of itself, reduce reliance on migration.

As for the temporary shortage list, Professor Bell added, it is not yet clear if the temporariness envisaged by the government refers to the length of time jobs will be on the list, or the time migrant workers will be allowed to spend in the UK. What is clear however, as we have explained in our analysis of the white paper, is that short-term routes can increase exploitation - and this is something the government needs to tackle more robustly. 

Tackling exploitation will require enforcement and visa flexibility 

Asked how effective the government is at designing immigration policy that minimises exploitation, Dr Sumption was clear that the UK government can do better. 

Exploitation takes place abroad first, which exacerbates risks of further exploitation when they get to the UK. But while it’s not possible to eliminate risks, more can be done within countries. We don’t have systematic checking of whether people are paid the wages they were promised, and when an employer is stripped of their licence, 12 months later they can apply to regain it. There is also no visibility of where the jobs are in the care sector. 

Given the flaws in the system that make it very difficult for workers to switch employers while experiencing, or directly following, exploitation, Dr Sumpton explored options that would make switching easier. A system which would quickly allow certified victims of exploitation to switch (such as our proposed Workplace Justice Visa) would be beneficial, but putting the burden of proof on the victim would be more burdensome than a system that allowed transfers to all regardless. The former is huge improvement on the current system, the latter is the ideal.

Then there is the issue with enforcement. Laws seeking to prevent or punish the perpetrators of exploitation are meaningless unless they are enforced. Professor Bell argues that more funding for tough action on employers such as raiding offices and factories. This would demonstrate to bad employers that they will be caught, and they will face consequences. And this does not need to come at a cost to the taxpayer. The onus could be placed on the employers to fund such action, as is the system with the Seasonal Worker Visa scheme, whereby recruitment fees paid by farms funds Home Office enforcement officers.