Sir Keir Starmer wants you to believe he’s serious about bringing immigration down. Faced with the political threat of Reform and growing anger over record levels of both illegal and legal migration, Labour has finally begun to talk the talk. But ‘Restoring Control Over the Immigration System’, the white paper in which the government details its borders crackdown, is flawed.
The threat to the border doesn’t always arrive in rubber dinghies. Sometimes it comes buried on page 76 of a white paper
For all the tough-sounding language about control and fairness, the document is shot through with proposals that quietly liberalise the system and could incentivise more illegal immigration. Here are three of the most consequential changes, each of them likely to make it harder, not easier, to bring migration down.
1. A new bereaved parent route
The white paper introduces a new immigration route for bereaved parents, specifically, those who have lost a child while living in the UK without settled status. The government’s argument is that, following the death of their child, parents should not be forced to leave the country while grieving. On the face of it, the policy sounds humane. But immigration rules are not just about individual compassion: they also set expectations for the system as a whole.
Allowing a person to stay in Britain after their child has died risks undermining a structured, rules-based system and instead moves towards one where discretion and circumstance play a larger role. It subtly reinforces the idea that settlement can be conferred on emotional or compassionate grounds.
More to the point, it sets a precedent. Today, it’s bereaved parents. Tomorrow, it may be carers, or siblings, or those facing other forms of hardship. Once the principle is conceded – that tragic personal circumstances trump other criteria – it becomes harder to draw the line. As with so much immigration policy over the years, what starts as an exception often becomes the rule.
2. A new route for those who ‘discover’ they aren’t settled
The second change is aimed at a group the Home Office describes as ‘children who have been in the UK for some time’ and ‘discover they do not have status’, who will be supported to ‘settle’. In other words: young people, often brought into the country illegally as children, who upon turning 18 realise they have no lawful status. The white paper out today proposes support to ‘regularise their status and settle’.
Again, this will be dressed up as fairness. After all, can you really blame someone for their parents’ decisions? But policies don’t exist in a vacuum. If the state starts offering amnesty-by-stealth to people in this category, it risks sending a signal: bring your children to Britain, and once they’re here long enough, the system may eventually let them stay.
There’s a reason the phrase ‘pull factor’ appears so often in border discussions. This proposal would be one.
3. Lowering financial thresholds for young adults
The paper also proposes to ‘consider measures to reduce the financial barriers to young adults, who have lived here through their childhood, from accessing British nationality.’ That sounds like Whitehallese for: ‘we’re going to make it cheaper to regularise your immigration status.’
But those barriers exist for a reason. They’re part of what distinguishes the legal immigration system from one of automatic entitlement. Lowering the cost of applications will almost certainly increase the number of people applying. It undermines the idea that migrants should earn their place. It’s another policy dressed in the garb of compassion that ultimately chips away at deterrence.
Put these three policies together, and a pattern emerges. Starmer talks about restoring control. The headlines make his proposals seem radical, as if the Labour government is finally getting tough on migration. But hidden away in the small print we find the sugar pills which Starmer has inserted to make the policy shift more palatable to his party, and perhaps to his own conscience as a former human rights lawyer.
These aren’t the kind of changes that will make front pages. They’ll be sold as minor adjustments or compassionate tweaks. But, taken as a whole, they shift the foundations of the immigration system back toward leniency, exceptions, and eventual amnesties.
The threat to the border doesn’t always arrive in rubber dinghies. Sometimes it comes buried on page 76 of a white paper.
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