The United Kingdom’s new migration rules tighten visa conditions, reduce rights and strengthen state control in the name of security. Driven by political pressure, these measures increase legal uncertainty and disproportionately affect foreign workers and key sectors reliant on migrant labour.
Pablo Munoz
In his essay on Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville said that majority opinion can suppress minority rights.
Given how elections force politicians to campaign constantly, they end up focusing on visibility, not competence; they focus on short-term gain, not long-term thinking.
Certain sectors of the Western world have recently been bewitched by the idea that security is more important than freedom and have jumped on the bandwagon of fearmongering and subtle racism brought along by the winds that cross the North Atlantic. The result is a noticeable shift of the Overton window worldwide, including the UK.
In 2023, the Conservative party—a mainstream centre-right national party—used “Stop the Boats” as a core slogan, referring to the need to put a stop to Channel crossings. Just last year, Chris Philp, the Shadow Home Secretary, addressed the Conservative Party Conference about securing the nation’s borders. Now, the government is moving towards harsher immigration policies. Last 5 March the Statement of Changes HC 1691—a set of rules which intends to hinder legal immigration coming and staying in the UK—was laid before parliament by the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, with the support of Mike Tapp, Minister for Migration and Citizenship.
The Prisma interviewed Amanda Ortega, an Ecuadorian lawyer who offers legal advice to immigrants in the UK, to understand these changes. She refers to the modifications as “profound” and “worrying”.
According to the UK Government, the HC 1691 updates the statement of practice used to administer entry to, and stay in, the country.
It includes procedural changes to the application processes, through amendments to validity requirements; a reduction of refugee permission duration, from five years to 30 months; an increase in visa fees, which vary between six to nine per cent; or new salary compliance rules, by which sponsors are required to ensure that Skilled Workers receive the required salary in each pay period, rather than relying on annual calculations.
This last point means that the sponsored worker must receive pay at the required level, as stipulated on the contract, and will be subject to recurrent monitoring jointly by the Home Office and HMRC. This means that if your salary falls below the minimum threshold, a gross salary of £38,700 per year, the Home Office will know instantly, and your visa might be considered to not meet the requirements and be revoked.
Ortega believes that the government wants to “strengthen migration control” and “reduce the excessive use of certain routes, especially asylum and labour migration”. These changes “introduce greater juridical insecurities” and “a greater control of immigration by the Home Office, which can mean an increase in denied entries”. As a result, she foresees “higher levels of litigation in courts”.
She says that the motivation behind these changes “is mainly political and strategic”. “The government wants an overall reduction in immigration, to answer to electoral pressures, and to reinforce perception over border security.”
Ortega says that these changes will affect particularly those labour markets which are more dependent on an immigrant workforce, like the care and healthcare, hospitality, education, and construction sectors.
On gender, Ortega argues that both men and women will be vulnerable to these changes, although differently. “Through the legal and social lens, women are more vulnerable due to migration dependency on abusive relationships, work in precarious sectors, and their applications being made based upon family bonds,” she said. “At the same time, men are more likely to be affected in terms of migration control and detention.”
Regarding possible jurisdictional tools at the disposal of those who are subject to these changes, Amanda Ortega mentions the Human Rights Act of 1998 and European Convention on Human Rights to defend their status on grounds of one’s right to family life, and the Equality Act 2010, in cases where there might be discrimination.
Ortega concludes that the HC 1691 “marks a significant change in the British immigration system. A system focused on integration is now moving towards a system focused on control.”
(Photos: Pixabay)
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