On 5 March, Labour Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced a further tighten-ing of restrictions on migrants to Britain, adding to the raft of proposals already put forward by this most racist of governments during its first 18 months in power. Refugees, previously granted five years’ leave to remain with the possibility of then applying for indefinite leave, will now see their status reviewed every 30 months, with the threat of being forced to return to countries the government no longer deems dangerous. This cruel measure was signed into law within days, without the need for a parliamentary vote. The same week, in a pilot scheme, 150 families of asylum seekers whose claims had failed were given seven days to leave Britain voluntarily in exchange for a lump sum of £40,000, or be forcibly deported. The govern-ment announced the suspension of new study visas to students from Cameroon, Sudan, Myanmar and Afghanistan – shutting down one of the only safe and legal routes for migrants from countries shattered by civil war and violence.
Meanwhile, a further series of repressive measures is in the pipeline. The government is ‘consulting’ on a set of reforms to the immigration system laid out in a White Paper in May 2025. These include doubling the current period of time required for migrants working in Britain to gain settled status from five years to ten – potentially rising to 20 years for refugees or those who have recourse to public funds in that period. Those who do not earn more than £12,570 – including adult social care workers who are amongst the lowest-paid workers in the country, as well as stay-at-home parents, will be blocked from applying altogether. However, high earners on a minimum £125,000 a year would be able to acquire settled status within as little as three years. These changes are aimed squarely at the poorest sections of the working class: think tanks have warned that they will increase poverty and exploitation for migrants stuck in low-paid jobs, particularly in the adult social care sector, denied access to in-work benefits or social housing, with children growing up and attending school in Britain but always stuck in the limbo of temporary status – including the risk of not being eligible for home (domestic) fees to attend university. Migrant families are also forced to pay out thousands of pounds every few years in immigration fees and health care charges.
Mahmood has promised that the changes will bring savings of £10bn to the British economy and need to be rushed through and applied retroactively before the large number of migrants who arrived in the immediate post-Covid period become eligible for settled status under current rules.
But there is huge disquiet even among Labour ranks about the proposals. Angela Rayner described them as ‘un-British’ – although in reality, nothing could be more British than the ruling class once again torn over how best to manage migration in the interests of capitalism. They are concerned about the thousands of vacancies in the already understaffed health and adult social care sectors that are being created by restricting the rights of the low-paid migrant workers on which the system depends. The influential IPPR think tank recently published a paper suggesting that the policies would bring no long-term fiscal gain.
But Labour’s driving through of these blatantly racist changes is, as always, as much ideological as economic. In his foreword to the White Paper, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said ‘the damage [migration] has done to our country is incalculable. Public services and housing access have been placed under too much pressure’. He warned at the time that ‘Britain risks becoming an island of strangers’, channelling Enoch Powell’s notorious 1968 ‘rivers of blood’ speech. These are the politics of divide and rule. In the midst of crisis, the ruling class is determined to bear down on the most oppressed sections of the working class; these are its traditional methods of punishment and control. The Labour Party is also seeking to recapture the votes it is leaching to Reform. It is therefore engaged in savage repression, with more than 58,500 migrants deported and immigration raids against ‘illegal workers’ up 77% since Labour came to power in 2024. While the British left chases tilts at the windmills of the ‘far right’, unions such as the RMT, for all their pledges to oppose ‘the fascist threat’, have failed abjectly to defend their members against Labour’s racist measures. We must be clear: any movement against racism in Britain has to start by challenging the Labour government and its racist immigration laws.
