High earners and entrepreneurs to get immigration rule carve-out
High earners and innovators are set to be handed softer rules on settled status despite an immigration crackdown led by home secretary Shabana Mahmood.
Under sweeping reforms to the legal migration system, Mahmood has revealed she is planning on only letting people arriving in the UK from 2021 to gain settled status, formally known as indefinite leave to remain, after remaining in the country for 10 years.
The home secretary, who referred to the near two million migrants who have arrived since 2021 as the “Boris wave” in respect of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s post-Brexit changes to immigration rules, said the proposed reforms would make sure people contribute to the UK economy.
It would mean several migrants lose access to benefits in the short term unless they became British citizens.
But people on visas for entrepreneurs and high earners will be able to gain settled status after three years, a carve-out made to “support economic growth”. Individuals able to gain settled status include those on the Global Talent visa and the Innovator Founder visa.
Higher and additional rate taxpayers will also benefit from a reduced settle status waiting period.
Doctors and nurses working in the NHS will be able to settle after five years.
Low paid workers and their dependents will have to wait 15 years to gain settled status as the government took aim at people on care worker visas.
Migrants reliant on benefits will have to wait a 20-year wait for settlement, the longest time period in Europe, in measures that are targeted at clamping down on illegal migration and making the UK less attractive to asylum seekers.
New immigration rules target ‘Boris wave’
People will only be able to receive settled status after 10 years if they make national insurance contributions. EU citizens will be exempt from the rule changes under the Brexit agreement.
To qualify for ILR, migrants will have to be working, speak A-level standard English and have a clean criminal record.
“This is the result of the extraordinary open border experiment conducted by the last Conservative government,” Mahmood told MPs on Thursday.
“In that period – now sometimes called the Boriswave – immigration controls were drastically lifted, this was most notable in the case of the health and care visa where minimum salary requirements were dropped.”
She also said settlement in the UK was “not a right but a privilege, and it must be earned”.
Her speech came as The Entrepreneurs Network said a survey showed that more than half of the UK’s fastest growing companies had a founder born outside of the country.
The policy group for startups called on the government to make visa routes more efficient, with ILR to be preserved for high potential individuals.
Researchers also said a new visa for spinouts at universities should be introduced to improve the prospects of higher growth,
Nick Rollason, head of immigration at Kingsley Napley, an immigration law firm who supported the research, said: “At a time when the broader immigration policy landscape is being reshaped by external forces, it is vital that the UK government stays focused on remaining open to global talent that can build businesses that create jobs and provide the revenues that pay for public services.
“With competition for skills and ideas intensifying, the need for agile and forward-looking reforms like these cannot be overstated.”