Illegal migrants who bring successful human rights claims to dodge deportation will be forced to wait 30 years to secure permanent leave to stay in Britain.
A new package of measures will also see foreign workers who do low-skilled jobs and claim state benefits have to wait up to 25 years for ‘indefinite leave to remain’ (ILR).
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has set out a range of planned changes to ILR, including major reforms which will apply retrospectively to almost two million migrants who arrived in the UK since 2021.
If a small boat migrant or another type of irregular migrant such as a visa overstayer manages to avoid being removed from Britain they will be penalised.
A new consultation paper from the Home Office said: ‘It is proposed that an increase in the qualifying period should … apply where the applicant originally entered the UK illegally, or where the applicant originally entered as a visitor.
‘This would mean, for example, that a person who entered the UK illegally could have a route to settlement as high as 30 years.’
Sources said this penalty would apply to failed asylum seekers who made a successful legal challenge under the ‘right to family life’ Article 8 provisions in the European Convention on Human Rights, for example.
Most migrants currently qualify for ILR after spending five years legally in the UK, but today’s paper suggests extending it to 15 years for those doing lower-skilled work, such as care assistants.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has set out sweeping proposals to reform legal migration routes
The 15 year wait would apply to migrants doing jobs which require qualifications lower than a bachelor’s degree.
In addition, further time penalties would be imposed on foreign nationals who claim benefits in this country.
Those who claimed welfare support here for less than a year would have to wait an extra five years to become eligible for ILR.
Anyone claiming benefits for more than a year would suffer a 10-year penalty.
It means that lower-skilled workers who have come to Britain in the last five years – and have clamed state hand-outs – would be forced to wait up to 25 years to secure ILR.
For higher-qualified foreign workers the standard time period would be 10 years.
The package will also impose requirements for all applicants to have a clean criminal record, to have paid National Insurance for at least three years, not owe the government money for visa fees or NHS costs, and speak A-level equivalent English.
The Home Office claimed it is the ‘biggest shake-up of the legal migration system in nearly half a century’
Ms Mahmood’s consultation paper on reforming legal migration said: ‘Migrants on lower wages who bring non-working dependants and children are likely to present significant fiscal costs to the UK.
‘It is therefore right that we apply more stringent controls for this group before they qualify for settled status.
‘Under our current rules, they will usually qualify for benefits payments and council housing five years after arrival.
‘As the majority of this group began arriving from 2022 onwards, this is currently set to begin in 2027.
‘We consult here on a separate baseline qualifying period, of 15 years, for this group.’
By contrast, public workers and high-rate taxpayers will secure significant discounts in the waiting times for ILR.
Doctors and nurses working in the NHS will be able to settle after five years.
Those paying the higher 40 per cent income tax rate will get five years knocked off their qualification period, bringing it down to five years.
And workers paying the ‘additional’ 45 per cent tax rate will get a seven year discount, lowering the period to three years.
The Home Office claimed it is the ‘biggest shake-up of the legal migration system in nearly half a century’.
The details emerged two months after the Home Secretary first floated the reforms at Labour party conference in Liverpool.
In her speech to Labour delegates in September, Ms Mahmood warned that migration levels must be addressed to avoid driving Britons who feel the country is ‘spinning out of control’ towards more extreme politics.
‘We have to understand why so many people feel this country is not working for them,’ she said.
‘Because the truth is, across this country, people feel like things are spinning out of control.
‘And without control, we simply do not have the conditions in which our country can be open, tolerant and generous.’
She went on: ‘When people see small boats arriving on our shores, they see a country that has lost control.
‘When they hear of widespread illegal working, undercutting British workers, they feel the system is rigged.
‘And when they see crime unchecked on unsafe streets, they feel fearful.’
Ms Mahmood told the conference that working class communities – her party’s traditional heartland – will turn away from Labour and ‘seek solace in the false promises of Nigel Farage’ if the Government failed to act on concerns over immigration.
‘They will turn towards something smaller, something narrower, something less welcoming, and the division within this country will grow.
‘So the challenge we now face is this, not just to win the next election but to keep the country together and to fight for our belief in a greater Britain, not a littler England,’ she said.