UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has exempted 300,000 foreign care workers from tighter new rules, despite previously warning that doing so could cost the taxpayer 10 billion pounds (about $13.4 billion).
Revealing the new proposals on Nov. 2, Mahmood said foreign carers who meet their visa conditions and earn at least 25,000 pounds (about $33,500) per year will be granted the permanent right to remain in the UK after just five years.
Indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status enables migrants to live, work, and claim benefits in the UK indefinitely.
Under Mahmood’s initial proposal, care workers would have had to wait 15 years to obtain ILR, amid fears of widespread abuse of the visa system for social care workers.
“Settled status is one of the most valuable rights this country can offer. Until now it has been given almost automatically. From today it must be earned,” the home secretary said when announcing the revised proposals to the House of Commons.
“Those who contribute will settle fastest. Those who don’t play by the rules will be refused or wait much longer.
“This policy creates a migration system that is fair—fair to those who come here and play their part and fair to British citizens already here, who must not be asked to bear a greater burden.”
Pushback Within Labour and Unions
Her announcement was made after pushback by lawmakers on the left of the governing Labour Party, led by Angela Rayner, who branded Mahmood’s original proposals “un-British” and “a breach of trust.”
More than 100 Labour backbenchers and major unions, including the Trades Union Congress, indicated that they would oppose the reforms.
Mahmood warned in a speech on March 5 that reducing the wait to five years for care workers would be a “10 billion-pound drain on … public finances” due to greater demand for benefits, social housing, lower tax receipts, and increased health and education costs for the country.
The home secretary, whose parents were Pakistani immigrants to the UK, spoke about levels of immigration under the previous Conservative government, in power for 14 years until 2024.
“In just four years, this country experienced levels of migration it had previously seen across four decades. It was not just the scale, but also the nature of that change that was so destabilizing,” she said as she vowed to reform the system.
‘Fraud Was Rife’
“This was most evident in the scandal of lowering the skills requirements … for some of those who arrived on the health and social care visa.”
“As we now know, fraud was rife—with phony care providers created to draw people to this country on a false promise of work,” Mahmood said, referring to the abuse of the visas to allow people to enter the country.
Eligible migrant workers on temporary visas can bring qualifying spouses and dependent children to the UK, although restrictions apply to care workers who have come to the country since March 2024.
Although most temporary visa holders are subject to conditions, meaning that they cannot claim benefits such as Universal Credit, migrant workers on qualifying visas can access National Health Service healthcare free at the point of use without paying a surcharge that some migrants have to pay as part of their application process.
The new plans mean that those who arrived illegally by boat and claimed asylum could now be required to wait 30 years before being granted ILR if their claim is assessed as genuine.
Conservative Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp told lawmakers in the Nov. 2 House of Commons debate: “The Home Secretary now proposes to allow every single care worker and their dependents who arrived prior to May 2025—a number running into hundreds of thousands—to stay in this country beyond the expiry of their visa and, in the case of 75 percent of them, to stay permanently, even though she acknowledges that many of them arrived fraudulently.
“That is the cost of today’s U-turn—10 billion pounds.”
Referring to the government’s own figures showing the cost to taxpayers of settlement for some 250,000 low-wage workers and dependents to be 10 billion pounds across a lifetime, he said: “This is completely unfair to hard-pressed taxpayers.”
‘Uniquely Stupid’ UK
Nigel Farage, leader of the populist Reform UK Party, said at a news conference that Mahmood’s announcement amounted to “a very major U-turn” in her position, which “will cost this country a vast amount of money.”
“Normal countries don’t give out work visas, allow you to bring dependents, automatically give you indefinite leave to remain, and then one year later citizenship,” Farage told reporters on Nov. 2.
“We are uniquely stupid in doing this, and we’ve been uniquely stupid in doing this for far too many years.”
Almost 1.9 million migrants are expected to obtain ILR in the UK between 2026 and 2030 under the existing settlement rules, according to Home Office estimates.
Mahmood’s new proposals are projected to delay settlement for more than half a million of them, but the department still forecasts that 1.4 million people will secure the right to remain permanently over the next four years.
The changes, due to take effect next year, will double the standard qualifying period for IRL to 10 years, and will be applied retrospectively to migrant workers already in the UK.
In addition to the new exception for care workers, migrants earning at least 50,271 pounds ($67,448) and many with skilled public-sector jobs will be able to qualify after five years, while those earning more than 125,000 pounds ($167,700) could qualify in just three.
