High standard English, paying taxes, volunteering, only route to settlement: UK Home Secretary

London | Shabana Mahmood used her maiden speech as UK Home Secretary on Monday to spell out some “tough” crackdowns on illegal and legal routes to immigration, with long-term residents expected to not only wait longer but also meet additional criteria before being considered for settlement rights in the country.

In her keynote address at the annual Labour Party conference in Liverpool, the Kashmiri heritage minister referenced her parents’ migrant journey in the 1970s to highlight that future applicants for indefinite leave to remain (ILR) must display high-level English language skills, no criminal record, regular tax contributions without any reliance on UK taxpayer benefits.

As part of an ongoing consultation, the time migrants must wait before being considered for ILR is already set to double, from five to 10 years, with the minister confirming that she will add further caveats to that process to make it tougher to settle in Britain.

These changes to the current five-year automatic route to ILR, which eventually opens up the prospect of British citizenship, are set to impact migrants from all parts of the world, including India.

“As part of the consultation, I will be proposing a series of new tests such as being in work, making National Insurance (NI tax) contributions, not taking a penny in benefits, learning English to a high standard, having no criminal record,” said Mahmood.

“And finally, that you have truly given back to your community, such as volunteering your time to a local cause. Without meeting those conditions, I do not believe your ability to stay in this country should be automatic,” said the minister, the first British Muslim minister to lead the UK Home Office.

“Time spent in this country alone is not enough. Just like my parents, you must earn the right to live in this country for good. If you do, I know that our country will welcome you,” she said.

Mahmood, Labour MP for Birmingham Ladywood who was promoted to her current portfolio in a Cabinet reshuffle by Prime Minister Keir Starmer earlier this month, told her party colleagues that she plans on tackling the immigration crisis head-on.

“Some may describe me in the coming months as a tough Home Secretary. Perhaps that is true. But let it never be forgotten that I will be a tough Labour Home Secretary, fighting alongside you all for a vision of this country that is distinctly our own,” she said.

The minister pledged to clamp down on the "criminal gangs" behind the trade in migrants being trafficked in dangerous small boats across the English Channel, admitted that not everyone will "always like what I do".

With regards to her ministerial brief to fight crime, Mahmood reflected upon her own upbringing as a shopkeeper’s daughter at a time when a cricket bat had to be kept behind the cash counter of her family store for safety.

“I am perhaps the only Home Secretary whose first job was behind the till in my parents’ corner shop. I know there is nothing low-level about shoplifting. I know what it feels like to keep a cricket bat behind the counter just in case,” she shared.

“So, I know that when we get tough and tackle crimes like this, we bring communities together. Safety is a precondition of the open, tolerant, generous country we want to be. While that starts with our streets, it extends to the nation itself,” she said.

With reference to the recent anti-immigration marches by far-right groups in London, the minister condemned them as a rising tide of “ethno-nationalism” that is in direct contrast to the “open, tolerant, generous" British values.

“Patriotism, a force for good, is turning into something smaller. Something more like ethno-nationalism, which struggles to accept that someone who looks like me, and has a faith like mine, can truly be English or British,” said Mahmood.

“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 added.