Keir Starmer says migrants will have to ‘earn the right' to live in UK as part of new crackdown
The prime minister said migrants must commit to integration and learning English, as part of a crackdown ministers say will boost economic growth.
In what the Labour leader claimed would be a 'clean break' from the past, the changes include a wait of 10 years, not five, to apply for permanent residency – unless they can prove a significant contribution – a ban on recruiting care workers from overseas and, for the first time, adult dependents will have to prove they understand basic English.
No 10 said that as the number of migrants swelled to more than 900,000 a year in 2023 'public services were stretched, housing costs soared and employers swapped skills investment for cheap overseas labour'.
Legal as well as illegal immigration featured heavily in the recent local elections, where Reform won 10 councils, almost 700 seats and took Runcorn and Helsby from Labour in a by-election.
And on Sunday, the shadow home secretary Chris Philp said the last Conservative government made a 'catastrophic mistake' on immigration, leaving it 'far, far too high'.
In a press conference on Monday, Sir Keir will say that for years a broken system has encouraged businesses 'to bring in lower-paid workers, rather than invest in our young people', pledging to replace it with one that is 'controlled, selective and fair'.
He will say every area of the immigration system, including 'work, family and study', will be tightened up, while enforcement will be 'tougher than ever'.
The new system will be 'one that recognises those who genuinely contribute to Britain's growth and society, while restoring common sense and control to our borders', he will say.
'This is a clean break from the past and will ensure settlement in this country is a privilege that must be earned, not a right.'
People coming to the UK must 'commit to integration and to learning our language', he will add, insisting the clampdown will deliver lower net migration, higher skills and support British workers.
No 10 said the changes would reduce reliance on overseas recruitment, prioritise contributors to the economy and put more money in people's pockets.
Also included will be plans to deport more foreign criminals, tell employers they must train UK staff and require skilled workers entering Britain to have a degree.
Employers looking for visas will have to show they are investing in British workers and raising skills, a move minsters say will boost economic growth.
The Independent revealed at the weekend that, as part of the drive, David Lammy has ordered Foreign Office officials to ensure that tackling the migration crisis is on the agenda for every international summit and meeting.
Under the new migration white paper, to be unveiled on Monday, it will take longer to be allowed to settle in the UK – 10 years instead of five – although those who can prove they have made a significant contribution to the country, such as nurses, doctors, engineers and AI leaders, will be fast-tracked.
Ministers will also raise the language requirements and, for the first time, extend them to all adult dependants, meaning they will have to demonstrate a basic understanding of English.
Reports suggest that visa applications from nationalities considered most likely to overstay and claim asylum could also be restricted.
Even before they were officially unveiled, elements of the plans came under fire.
Unison general secretary Christina McAnea said: 'The NHS and the care sector would have collapsed long ago without the thousands of workers who've come to the UK from overseas.
'Migrant health and care staff already here will now be understandably anxious about what's to happen to them. The government must reassure these overseas workers they'll be allowed to stay and continue with their indispensable work.'
Reform UK's deputy leader also said it would use 'whatever levers' it can to challenge asylum hotels, as he claimed the party has a 'team of lawyers' working with it.
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The Guardian
30 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Ice raids leave crops unharvested at California farms: ‘We need the labor'
Lisa Tate is a sixth-generation farmer in Ventura county, California, an area that produces billions of dollars worth of fruit and vegetables each year, much of it hand-picked by immigrants in the US illegally. Tate knows the farms around her well. And she says she can see with her own eyes how raids carried out by agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in the area's fields earlier this month, part of Donald Trump's immigration crackdown, have frightened off workers. 'In the fields, I would say 70% of the workers are gone,' she said in an interview. 'If 70% of your workforce doesn't show up, 70% of your crop doesn't get picked and can go bad in one day. Most Americans don't want to do this work. Most farmers here are barely breaking even. I fear this has created a tipping point where many will go bust.' In the vast agricultural lands north of Los Angeles, stretching from Ventura county into the state's central valley, two farmers, two field supervisors and four immigrant farmworkers told Reuters this month that the Ice raids have led a majority of workers to stop showing up. That means crops are not being picked and fruit and vegetables are rotting at peak harvest time, they said. One Mexican farm supervisor, who asked not to be named, was overseeing a field being prepared for planting strawberries last week. Usually he would have 300 workers, he said. On this day he had just 80. Another supervisor at a different farm said he usually has 80 workers in a field, but that day he had just 17. Most economists and politicians acknowledge that many US agricultural workers are in the country illegally, but say a sharp reduction in their numbers could have devastating impacts on the food supply chain and farm-belt economies. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a Republican and former director of the Congressional Budget Office, said an estimated 80% of farmworkers in the US were foreign-born, with nearly half of them in the country illegally. Losing them will cause price hikes for consumers, he said. 'This is bad for supply chains, bad for the agricultural industry,' Holtz-Eakin said. Over a third of US vegetables and over three-quarters of the country's fruits and nuts are grown in California, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture. The state's farms and ranches generated nearly $60bn in agricultural sales in 2023. Of the four immigrant farmworkers Reuters spoke to, two are in the country illegally. These two spoke on the condition of anonymity, out of fear of being arrested by Ice. One, aged 54, has worked in US agricultural fields for 30 years and has a wife and children in the country. He said most of his colleagues have stopped showing up for work. 'If they show up to work, they don't know if they will ever see their family again,' he said. The other worker in the country illegally said: 'basically, we wake up in the morning scared. We worry about the sun, the heat, and now a much bigger problem – many not returning home. I try not to get into trouble on the street. Now, whoever gets arrested for any reason gets deported.' To be sure, some farmworker community groups said many workers were still returning to the fields, despite the raids, out of economic necessity. The days following a raid may see decreased attendance in the field, but the workers soon return because they have no other sources of income, five groups told Reuters. Workers are also taking other steps to reduce their exposure to immigration agents, like carpooling with people with legal status to work or sending US citizen children to the grocery store, the groups said. Trump conceded in a post on his Truth Social account this month that Ice raids on farm workers – and also hotel workers – were 'taking very good, long-time workers away' from those sectors, 'with those jobs being almost impossible to replace'. Trump later told reporters: 'Our farmers are being hurt badly. They have very good workers.' He added: 'They're not citizens, but they've turned out to be great.' He pledged to issue an order to address the impact, but no policy change has yet been enacted. Trump has always stood up for farmers, said White House spokesperson Anna Kelly in response to a request for comment on the impact of the Ice raids to farms. 'He will continue to strengthen our agricultural industry and boost exports while keeping his promise to enforce our immigration laws,' she said. Bernard Yaros, lead US economist at Oxford Economics, a nonpartisan global economics advisory firm, said in a report published on 26 June that native-born workers tend not to fill the void left by immigrant workers who have left. 'Unauthorized immigrants tend to work in different occupations than those who are native-born,' he said. Ice operations in California's farmland were scaring even those who are authorized, said Greg Tesch, who runs a farm in central California. 'Nobody feels safe when they hear the word Ice, even the documented people. We know that the neighborhood is full of a combination of those with and without documents,' Tesch said. 'If things are ripe, such as our neighbors have bell peppers here, (if) they don't harvest within two or three days, the crop is sunburned or over mature,' said Tesch. 'We need the labor.'
The Guardian
33 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Palestine Action spraying paint is not terrorism. As ministers abuse their powers, I feel a duty to speak out
Strongly worded emails are not doing it. Appeals to MPs are not doing it. Taking to the streets in our hundreds of thousands with banners and placards is not working. Elected representatives from every party in parliament have stood in the Commons and asked the government to act. Some government ministers themselves have condemned Israel's starvation of Palestinians in Gaza. Every poll of public opinion shows that the nation demands we stop arming Israel, and wants to see an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire. But none of these things are working. Keir Starmer and his cabinet remain impervious to all calls for humanitarian intervention, and Israel is still killing children in Gaza with the support of the British government. To proscribe as 'terrorist' a non-violent direct action group such as Palestine Action threatens the fundamental rights of freedom of expression, and of peaceful protest. Surely the government should only ever apply the Terrorism Act with the utmost restraint and precision. Otherwise it allows the state to repress civil liberties that have been dearly fought for and won, and which represent the bedrock of our democracy. Those civil liberties have already come under real and dangerous threat. The powers given to the police have incrementally increased to an alarming degree, owing in part to the Terrorism Act of 2000 and the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act of 2022. These have both led to the right of public protest being seriously eroded, and afforded the police much greater powers and significantly less accountability. We have for some time seen these powers being used to suppress lawful protest and to detain peaceful protesters. In addition, leaving aside its members, the proscription of Palestine Action will directly affect many other activists who are deeply concerned about the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza. Even to be seen to support PA's non-violent direct action will be to risk being criminalised. The government's response to embarrassing security breaches at RAF bases by Palestine Action seems disproportionate, and highlights, I think, the influence on them of vested interests. There has long been a campaign by senior rightwing politicians, arms company executives and pro-Israel lobby groups to shut down Palestine Action and have it proscribed. Lockheed Martin UK is a key manufacturer of parts for the F-35 fighter jets that have helped Israel flatten the Gaza Strip, kill more than 56,000 people and create more child amputees per capita than anywhere else in the world. The government ended direct sales to Israel of some weapons, but created an 'F-35 exemption' allowing sales of these parts to continue to reach Israel via the US, where the planes are assembled. The Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems also operates on UK soil, and our government has lucrative bilateral deals with the company. As far back as 2022 the then home secretary, Priti Patel, held a meeting with Martin Fausset, the CEO of Elbit Systems in the UK, to discuss how to deal with Palestine Action. The definition of terrorism as laid out in the Terrorism Act of 2000 is clear, and includes 'serious damage to property'. Does spraying red paint on to metal constitute serious damage? The condemnation of this spraying of red paint on to planes as expressed by the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, does not appear to be matched by any equivalent condemnation by her of red blood sprayed on to the tented walls of Gaza. So yes, crimes concerning damage to property have been committed, but there are already laws in place to deal with them. Labelling these as terrorism only serves to deepen the UK government's complicity in the war crimes being committed in Palestine. In a further act of desperation, efforts have been made to try to undermine the motives of Palestine Action by making a tenuous link to Iran, with unnamed Home Office sources telling newspapers it is investigating the group's finances. Smear campaigns such as this are part of a wider policy by government to intimidate and clamp down on dissent. I have had a small taste of this myself. On 18 January, I attended a rally in Whitehall organised by Stop the War – and noticed immediately that the tactics of the police that day seemed to be markedly different. Present in their thousands, they were already kettling people at the start of the event, and behaving in a manner that seemed aggressive and provocative. The march to the BBC, which had been planned to protest against its coverage of the conflict, had been prohibited by the Met at short notice, and the gathering was confined to Whitehall. I was asked to join a group of about 12 people who would form a symbolic delegation, and request passage through police lines to reach the BBC. There we planned to lay flowers at the door. Reaching the police lines, after some hesitation and resistance, an officer allowed us through. Shortly after that, however, our progress was curtailed by another police line. It was here that I saw at close hand the disproportionate tactics used by police. I witnessed further vanloads of police arriving in the area, kettling peaceful protesters and making numerous arrests – 77 in total that day. Three weeks later I was sent a letter from the Met threatening me with charges under section 14 of the Public Order Act. I then faced a three-hour police interview, before being told after several weeks (and several thousand pounds of legal fees) that I would face no further action. Over the past 21 months, I have met many hundreds of people who come out – often travelling long distances – to protest against this genocide. Old people and young, people of every faith, race, generation and ethnic identity. They come in horror at the brutality being inflicted on the population of Gaza. And many of those in our midst are Jewish. But still we are accused by lobby groups of antisemitism. This I disregard; I am married to a Jewish man, whose mother was a refugee from Hitler's Vienna. She escaped just in time in 1938 as a refugee, and most of her family were subsequently wiped out in the Holocaust. My children define themselves as Jewish, and we have many beloved Jewish friends, all of whom are appalled by the activities of Benjamin Netanyahu, his government and the Israel Defense Forces. These Jewish friends are people driven by compassion, humanity and a sense of right and wrong that will not yield to intimidation. In Gaza, the world is watching the most heinous acts of violence that I have witnessed in my lifetime. It is as if the skin has been ripped off the face of humanity to reveal terrifying depths of sadism and depravity. I am intensely aware of this thought: I do not want to find myself at the end of my life looking back at this time regretting that I could have done something and didn't – that I was too frightened to speak out, or to act. Palestine Action and its supporters will have no such regrets. Our current British government, however, may well. Juliet Stevenson is an award-winning actor Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
The Independent
39 minutes ago
- The Independent
Two arrests after Palestine Action claims blocking Israeli defence firm UK site
Two arrests have been made after soon-to-be banned direct action group Palestine Action claimed to have blockaded the entrance of an Israeli defence company's UK headquarters. It comes ahead of proposed legislation that will ban the group under anti-terror law. Avon and Somerset Police said a 30-year-old woman and a 36-year-old man, both from London, have been arrested on suspicion of criminal damage, unauthorised entry to a prohibited place and locking onto a person, object or land to cause serious disruption. Earlier on Tuesday, a Palestine Action spokesperson said activists had blocked the entrance to Elbit Systems in Bristol, and covered it in red paint 'to symbolise Palestinian bloodshed'. Avon and Somerset Police said officers were called to the site at around 6.30am. A spokeswoman said: 'Two people have been arrested following a small protest outside a premises at the Aztec West Business Park, in Almondsbury. 'They remain in police custody and inquiries are ongoing. 'We're committed to facilitating people's right to peaceful protest, but will not tolerate any criminal behaviour.' The incident comes as a draft order was laid before Parliament on Monday to amend the Terrorism Act 2000 to include Palestine Action as a proscribed organisation. If approved, it would become a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison to be a member of the direct action group or to support it. MPs and peers are expected to debate the legislation on Wednesday and Thursday and, if approved, the ban could come into force by Friday. A Palestine Action spokesperson said: 'While the Government is rushing through Parliament absurd legislation to proscribe Palestine Action, the real terrorism is being committed in Gaza. 'Palestine Action affirms that direct action is necessary in the face of Israel's ongoing crimes against humanity of genocide, apartheid, and occupation, and to end British facilitation of those crimes.' The group also occupied the rooftop of UK subcontractor Guardtech Group, the spokesperson added. Officers are also at the scene at the site in Brandon, Suffolk. A Suffolk Police spokesman said: 'Officers and specialist negotiators are currently at the location and our immediate priority is to bring this to a conclusion and to ensure the safety of everyone at the scene.' Palestine Action is seeking a legal challenge against the Government's bid to proscribe it, with a hearing expected on Friday to decide whether the ban can be temporarily blocked, pending further proceedings to decide whether a legal challenge can be brought. Commenting on the proscription on Monday, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: 'The right to protest and the right to free speech are the cornerstone of our democracy and there are countless campaign groups that freely exercise those rights. 'Violence and serious criminal damage has no place in legitimate protests.'
