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Planned UK immigration reforms would leave tens of thousands of non-working partners of highly paid migrants with no route to settlement, according to analysis that calls into question the fiscal benefits of a policy billed as the biggest overhaul of the legal migration model in 50 years.
The Home Office has received as many as 130,000 responses to a consultation closing on Thursday, on changes to immigration rules designed to stop hundreds of thousands of care workers who came to the UK between 2021 and 2024 qualifying for benefits.
Under the plans set out by home secretary Shabana Mahmood in November, the default period that migrants on work visas must wait to settle permanently in the UK will double to 10 years.
Complex rules could shorten the wait for higher-rate taxpayers, lengthen it to 15 years for those working in non-graduate roles or stretch it even further for refugees or migrants reliant on benefits.
But analysis published on Tuesday by Oxford university’s Migration Observatory showed that tens of thousands of non-working partners of migrants on skilled worker visas — primarily women — could be among hundreds of thousands ineligible to settle at all.
This is because dependants, who qualify for settlement at the same time as the main visa holder, will in future need a track record of paying tax on annual earnings above £12,570.
Madeleine Sumption, director of Oxford university’s Migration Observatory, said this mandatory earnings requirement was the “single biggest change” from the UK’s current settlement regime, potentially leaving hundreds of thousands of refugees, family visa holders and others ineligible to settle.
Mahmood has said it is essential to ensure that an estimated 1.6mn migrants who would be expected to apply to settle by 2030 under the current rules qualify only if they are “making an economic contribution”.
But she has also acknowledged the government may need to rethink some elements of the policy, in particular those affecting partners and children.
Under the proposed rules, even the highest-paid expats could not necessarily settle at the same time as their family, due to the new mandatory earnings requirement.
Even those partners who did work could be stuck on a 10-year track, as many did not earn enough to qualify for settlement on the three- or five-year track open to most skilled workers.
This has consequences for children, who can settle at present only when both parents qualify. Hundreds of thousands of children already in the UK are potentially affected and the issue is particularly acute for teenagers turning 18 while waiting, since they would incur international fees to attend university and might not be able to lead independent lives.
Nicolas Rollason, partner at the law firm Kingsley Napley, said that with so many families in Britain now facing a 15-year wait, the impact of the new rules on children “does not work and needs to be reviewed”.
The policy made no sense if the government’s aim was to maximise the fiscal and economic benefits of migration, Sumption said, since “you could have an IT director earning £150,000 and his wife has to work part-time in a minimum wage job for her or her kids to be eligible”.
“You don’t have to deter very many high earners to have a significant [fiscal] cost,” Sumption said, noting that the people most likely to leave the UK as a result of the policy changes were high flyers with other career options, rather than the lowest paid.
Alan Manning, former head of the government’s Migration Advisory Committee, also said the mandatory earnings requirement for dependants looked “untenable”.
It would make more sense to assess household income than to exclude the partners of “very highly paid investment bankers in Chelsea”, he added.
The reforms could have a positive fiscal effect in the short term, the Migration Observatory said, because they would delay the point at which low-paid migrants became eligible for benefits.
But the overall impact would be limited, because “the largest fiscal costs . . . tend to come later in life”, it added.
Mahmood has signalled that the government is considering changes to the proposals to lessen the impact on at least some non-working partners and children.
She told MPs on the House of Commons home affairs committee last week that the final policy was “still being designed”, and said the government would “think carefully” about exemptions or additional arrangements for people who could not fulfil the mandatory earnings requirement.
One option was to look at household income, rather than each individual’s earnings, she said, adding later that the government would also need to “develop careful pathways to deal with the particular issue of children”.
But Mahmood gave no sign the government would cede to Labour MPs’ main concern: that the new rules will apply to millions of people who have come to the UK since 2021 — many of them to work in low-paid care roles — on the expectation of settling after five years.
The Home Office said in a statement that Mahmood had “set out her plans for the biggest legal migration reforms in 50 years”.
“It is a privilege not a right to settle in the UK and it must be earned. We are reforming a broken immigration system to prioritise contribution and integration,” the department added.