When the home secretary’s family landed in Britain 50 years ago from Kashmir they did not have to wait ten or fifteen years to have the right to remain. No one set them a higher English test they had to pass. Nobody preached at them about ‘contributing responsibly’ before they won their rights to stay.

All this has changed for similar migrants today.   Mahmood has U turned on some aspects of her reforms after coming under so much pressure from Labour MPs and even ministers. However vital care workers will have to earn more than £25,000 a year and meet conditions that her parents never had to. Instead of taking action against employers paying people poverty wages under £25K as carers she is so ‘generously’ giving them the chance to switch jobs and to get onto another 5 year pathway.

What will happen to those who will find this difficult? Is it fair that they start a new 5 year track whereas people already in slightly better paid care jobs are already on that?

The whole scheme in any case only applies to care workers in post before May 2025 when Labour first proposed the changes. Careworkers coming in since that date will be on the 10 year route.

For Labour some workers are more equal than others

In Labour’s world despite all the rhetoric about ‘budgets for working people’ and ‘Labour values’ not all workers are equal. If you are not born here you are not equal. If you managed to get here to live and work you are not equal to other migrants.  So a 5-year path will remain open to all higher earners, on salaries of over £50,000, and those who have contributed in healthcare and education in professions like doctors, nurses and teachers.

If you are a migrant working in construction or hospitality you are stuck with the ten year rule. We should remember what this means. It is difficult to get a mortgage, you are paying taxes and National Insurance but you have to pay a NHS fee on top and there is always the risk over such a long time that you might make one mistake and you go back to the beginning again. The level of English required in the tests is often higher than for many native speakers. You are living in constant insecurity. A change of government could mean being kicked out.

For Labour not all workers are equal – if you are a high paid one or a manager, even faster routes are available. The highest rate taxpayers, earning over £125,000 will, be able to apply for settlement after 3 years, as will those who arrive on ‘our highest talent schemes’.

Mahmood  invokes ‘the exceptional contribution’ these higher rate taxpayers make thereby completely accepting the capitalist market evaluation of a worker’s worth. Wiping asses in care homes in not exceptional but some IT whizz who can make up some game or entertaining phone app is considered so. Even old Labour people like Nye Bevan would never have swallowed this sort of talk.

Knowing that a blanket move to the 10 year or longer rule would continue to produce a staffing crisis in the NHS and some other public sector jobs, Mahmood has a list of jobs where the 5 year rule will apply even below the £50K cap,  such as physiotherapists

Knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing

Slipped into her speech Mahmood makes a big deal of how people coming on ‘safe and legal’ routes will benefit from the five year route.  She is very careful not to put any numbers on migrants coming on these routes. We all know that it is a very, very small proportion and it is made deliberately difficult to access these routes.  If she was serious about expanding these routes people dying needlessly in the channel would stop.

Mahmood attempts to monetise all the so called costs of immigration. For example she talks of £4 billion in asylum costs. She could cut this tomorrow if she allowed people awaiting asylum the right to work.  Not a word of course about the fact that Britain takes a much smaller proportion of refugees than some other European countries and hugely less than poorer countries outside the highly developed West. Not a word either about the duty of countries set out in the UN charter to welcome refugees fleeing prosecution. Of course there is no understanding that these refugees come from war zones that Britain helped create with its US ally or from deserts created by the burning of fossil fuels by Britain and the West.

All of these new restrictions continue to reflect Labour’s retreat and cowardice when confronted by the rise of right wing racist political parties like Reform and Restore and the new right wing lurch of the Tories. Unsurprisingly Kemi Bedanach has denounced Mahmood’s limited U turn as capitulation to the ‘open borders tendencies’ of Labour MPs.

Labour MPs cave at first concessions

If only there were a real strong opposition to these backward steps among Labour MPs. We are seeing the same film played again. Labour Home secretary puts out some really horrendous measures, Labour MPs with some values react loudly, some concessions are made and the soft left more or less accept it all without much more of a fight.  The script is just such a cliché.

The Guardian reported today: “As she announced the plans in the Commons, there was relatively little outright criticism of the proposals from Labour MPs”

Internationalists and ecosocialists reject this division of working people between the native born and others who happen to be born elsewhere. During the revolutionary phase of the Russian revolution at the turn of the last century the new government gave full citizenship to anyone living there. A similar situation existed in the first years of the Cuban revolution.

Even the EU rules on free movement look revolutionary compared to the elaborate and arbitrary restrictions Mahmood is implementing today.  If you went and worked in Italy or France you were not forced to provide evidence you were ‘contributing to society’. Nobody talked about the ‘privilege’ of being able to work on a construction site in Germany – it was your right as a worker.

From migrants deemed a burden…to welfare clients

The continuation of the discourse where migrants are seen as a burden on the state flips over easily into idea that native born workers are a burden for expecting decent welfare benefits if they are unable to work or if the capitalist system does not provide any. One division between workers, leads to another.

Noticeably absent from Mahmood’s speech was any estimation that the overall migrant population are actually contributing more that the so-called native populations. Most migrants are younger, without families and less sick so require the NHS less. Their super-exploited work as carers in private homes or in the community saves the state many billions.  Economists have estimated that growth will be less if Britain fails to receive more migrant workers in the coming decades.

Attacking migrants and treating them as a burden encourages Farage and Reform UK who are openly talking about abolishing the right to remain entirely.

Charities and even bosses’ organisations like the Care home owners or the CBI are also critical. Businesses need the cheap labour.  The Law Society also condemned the plans. Its vice president, Dana Denis-Smith, said:

“The home secretary’s decision to change pathways to settlement retrospectively undermines the legal certainty that individuals, families and employers rely on. For those already on the path to settlement, the government decision to change the rules which people relied on when making important decisions about their future is unjust.

She also suggested the rules for refugees contravened the Refugee Convention.

Extending the qualifying period from five to 20 or even 30 years, for those that have no choice but to enter through unsafe means, backtracks on promises the UK has made under the Refugee Convention 1951 to help those seeking protection to integrate and build a new life. This obligation applies to all refugees, regardless of how they arrived.” 

(Guardian live blog 2 November)

Step the fight against these measures

Trade unions like UNISON and the GMB have played a role in pushing back some of the worst aspect of these changes. They need to fight alongside all progressive campaigners to roll back the whole package and to fight for the unity and equal rights of all workers living here. Unfortunately Paul Nowak, head of the TUC has made a very weak statement welcoming the announcement, only calling for a care sector wide visa that is not yet part of Mahmood’s plans.  One might have thought that the TUC was supposed to defend all workers not just one sector.

Labour’s Diane Abbott told Mahmood she was in danger of creating another Windrush scandal. And she complained about the changes being retrospective. She said:

It is right that care workers are exempted from the new arrangements for [indefinite leave to remain]

But for the rest of the workforce, the retrospective nature of these new arrangements still seem to be unfair because you can come in legally, you can work legally and then have your residency rights turned upside down. How can that be fair?  (

Guardian ibid)