…Extends migrants wait for citizenship to 10 years
MON MAY 12 2025-theGBJournal| UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday unveiled a new immigration policy which he says will see migration, particularly legal migration, number fall significantly.
The proposed policy include requirement that extends migrants wait for citizenship to 10 years from the current 5 years.
Migrants also face immediate deportation for even lower-level crimes, while English tests will be required for all visa applicants and their adult dependents, as well as a longer route to settled status.
The policy includes deep cuts in over seas care workers recruitment also, a move that will create significant gap in the sector over time.
The proposal to cut care worker recruitment have deep implication for Nigerian care workers, who have been a significant part of UK’s care workforce.
The policy presents new challenge, and means significant reduction in chances of recruitment of those who apply to work in the UK.
Meanwhile, the policy is silent on the issue of people crossing in small boats, or other ways people arrive the UK without permission.
”Within our plan for change, we are restoring common sense and control to our boarder and begin to choose who comes here,” Starmer said while unveiling the policy.
The policy promises to create a migration system that is controlled, selective and fair, ”a clean break with the past that links access to visas directly to investment in home grown skills.”
Net migration in UK reached a record 906,000 in June, 2023, and in 2024 dropped to 728,000.
This year to date, it is estimated that 11,516 people have crossed the English Channel to the UK by boat. The number was recorded at just under 40,000 in total in 2024.
In defence of the policy, the UK Prime Minister said high levels of immigration had not produced growth and were undermining social cohesion, threatening to turn Britain into ”an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together.”
He said the last government (Conservatives) ”lost control of the boarders” and his party (Labour) has been left to clear up that mess.”
X-@theGBJournal|Facebook-the Government and Business Journal|email:gbj@govbusinessjournal.com|govandbusinessj@gmail.com
