Migrant Care Workers Face 15-Year Wait Under Mahmood's Settlement Plan

By Olivia Hart

Migrant workers on "low-skilled" visas will wait up to 15 years for permanent residency — three times the previous five-year rule — under new plans from Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood. The change would be backdated to 2021, catching the so-called "Boriswave": the surge of workers, many on health and care visas, who arrived during Boris Johnson's years in office and would have begun qualifying for settlement in 2027.

The proposal has split the cabinet. Critics inside government, including colleagues of Mahmood herself, argue the state is reneging on what workers understood to be the deal when they came to Britain. The rule requires 15 years of continuous employment without a break. In practice, some workers will have to leave; others, in the words of Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff, "will live in mortal fear of losing a job."

The growing revolt is becoming the first real test of Prime Minister Andy Burnham's authority — and, more broadly, of where he actually stands on immigration.

Who pays the price for lower numbers?

The groups hit hardest are care workers, a workforce disproportionately staffed by migrants and, as Hinsliff notes, one that is "relentlessly undervalued" — lousy pay, little recognition, and now the discovery that the government "can snap its fingers and all your life plans are upended overnight."

The fiscal arithmetic is blunt. Last month the Institute for Fiscal Studies warned that falling immigration would inevitably mean falling tax revenues, shrinking Chancellor John Healey's headroom at this month's budget by about £4bn. That figure undercuts a long-standing claim on the right that migrants are a net drain: on the numbers, Hinsliff writes, "they've been bailing Britain out."

The NHS adds a second revenue stream the crackdown threatens. New research from the Nuffield Trust shows the immigration health surcharge — the fee migrants pay on top for access to the NHS while in Britain — now raises £2.5bn a year. The trust estimates migrants pay in, on average, 60% more in surcharge per year than they take out in healthcare services. Migrants, it turns out, are generally healthier than the average Briton and less likely to need a GP — the argument liberals made and were mocked for.

The trust also warns that falling immigration can trigger "a sharp drop in income" for the NHS, much as slashing foreign student visas has hurt universities dependent on their fees.

What did the OBR actually say?

In 2024, the Office for Budget Responsibility calculated that the Johnson-era immigration surge — the same surge that offended Tory voters — would help knock more than £7bn off projected government borrowing by 2028-29. Economically, Hinsliff concludes, immigration is basically good news.

The corollary is uncomfortable. If the country genuinely wants lower migration, then something else must plug the hole: higher taxes, lower spending, or more borrowing. Successive governments, fearful of confronting Leave voters, have spent years pretending that choice does not exist.

Mahmood's plan attempts to square the circle once again. The system would admit as few people as possible while cherry-picking those likeliest to make an outsized economic contribution: the highest-paid workers — those expected to pay substantial lifetime tax — would be fast-tracked to settlement, while those judged more likely to burden the state would be pushed away.

Two problems loom. First, the rest of the world is in hot competition for high-skilled migrants. Second, as Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh has pointed out, endlessly prolonging settlement risks undermining social cohesion. A country that signals its foreign workers are here on sufferance at best — even those who hold lives in their hands at work daily — does nothing to encourage them to integrate or put down roots.

Does the crackdown even work politically?

Burnham's announcement that a future Labour government might consider rejoining the EU leaves Mahmood's reforms looking, in Hinsliff's framing, "strangely like the relics of a bygone era." If rejoining the single market or customs union means accepting freedom of movement again, what exactly is the point of the ratchet?

The electoral evidence is equally sobering. Legal migrant numbers are at a historic low and small boat crossings have halved — yet anger at asylum seekers spilled onto the streets again this summer. The mainstream right has shifted from pre-Brexit complaints about Polish plumbers to a darker post-Brexit rhetoric painting migrants as rapists and criminals. The far right has moved from cheerleading deportations to insisting that even people born in Britain are not English unless they are white.

Hinsliff's verdict is unsparing: "There is no level of migration low enough to satisfy some people." There is, however, a level low enough to make the country poorer and the angry angrier — and Britain, she argues, is living with it now.

The so-what for business readers: a cabinet divided, a chancellor down £4bn in headroom, an NHS losing a £2.5bn annual income stream, and an immigration regime that may be obsolete before it takes effect. Mahmood has not yet explained who fills that gap.