Since May 2025, the Labour government has been preparing sweeping changes to Indefinite Leave to Remain status. The Home Office is set to replace the standard five-year route to achieving permanent residence with an ‘earned settlement’ model. For migrants classified as low or mid-skilled workers the route could be extended to 10 or 15 years. People who came to Britain under one set of rules are being forced to adhere to a new set that will make workers more dependent on employers.
The public dispute between Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Immigration Minister Mike Tapp revealed the contradiction at the heart of Labour’s plans. Mahmood, backed by Andy Burnham, defends lengthening the route to settlement. Tapp, meanwhile, argues that care workers already in Britain should be exempt because the care system is structurally dependent on cheap migrant labour. Migrants make up 32% of Britain’s social-care workforce and successive governments have left the system underfunded and increasingly privatised. Employers benefit from a workforce whose immigration status can be tied to a single sponsor. This system actively produces a super-exploited layer of the working class who face the threat of losing their visa if they lose their job. Such workers are less able to challenge excessive hours, wage theft, unsafe working conditions or abuse.
Eighty Labour MPs have signed an open letter calling for the changes not to be retroactive. While migrant care workers and workers rights’ experts have supported Tapp’s proposal as the ‘right thing to do’, Tapp’s call to exempt existing care workers is not a challenge to the proposed changes; it is an attempt to manage their consequences – a care-sector staffing crisis and working class anger.
Ultimately, both positions share the principle that migrant workers are labour to be admitted, retained or discarded according to the needs of British capitalism. British-born and migrant workers have a common interest in fighting the state’s racist immigration policies. The ruling class uses immigration controls to create insecurity for migrants and to weaken the bargaining power of all workers. Defending migrant workers is therefore essential to the fight for the liberation of all workers.
Leonora Reed
