In a statement to the House of Commons on the 4th of December 2023, Home Secretary James Cleverly outlined the government’s new 5-point plan to curb immigration. This plan will apparently take effect in Spring 2024, but no exact dates have yet been published.
This plan involved dramatic and costly changes for a number of popular visa routes such as the skilled worker route, the spouse visa route, and the Health and Care visa route. In short, Mr. Cleverly’s five points are as follows:
- Skilled Worker Visas
- The minimum salary requirement for skilled workers is to be raised from £26,200 to £38,700. This increase comes very shortly on the heels of the previous increase in March of this year where the requirement was raised from £25,600 to £26,200. This new increase is nearly 50% more than the current rate. The health and care worker visa will, however, be exempted from this.
- Spouse/Family Visas
- The minimum income requirement for a spouse or family visa is to be raised from £18,600 to £38,700 to be in line with the skilled worker requirement. This rate has not been previously increased since 2012. However, it should be noted that the previous rate of £18,600 meant that, until the national minimum wage increases in April 2022, many on minimum wage could not bring their spouse on this visa as they would not have been making enough money through single employment alone. Once more, this change will mean that large groups of British or settled people will not be able to bring their spouses or children to the UK.
- Health and Care Worker Visas
- People on this visa route will no longer be able to bring dependents to the UK. Dependents generally include spouses/civil partners, and children. English care firms will also have to be regulated by the Care Quality Commission in order to sponsor visas. Mr. Cleverly stated that only 25% of dependants of care workers are currently estimated to be in work, however, his statement did not address any reasons as to why the remaining 75% may not be in work, for instance, whether they are children.
- Student Visas & Graduate Visas
- The graduate visa route will be subject to a full review and only those on student visas who are in postgraduate research programmes will be able to bring dependents to the UK. This is a further tightening of the already outlined changes about restricting dependents for students doing master’s courses and it joins the changes already outlined that stop students switching to work routes before their course is completed. Mr. Cleverly outlined in his statement that apparently 153,000 visas were granted to dependents of students in the year ending in September 2023, but he did not mention that this figure came up to less than a quarter of the overall number of visas granted to students which was 498,626 in the year ending in June 2023.
- Shortage Occupation List
- The shortage occupation list will be reformed and the 20% going rate salary discount for shortage occupations will be abolished. Apparently, the new immigration salary list will contain a shorter number of occupations.
In addition to the above points, Mr. Cleverly reiterated that the Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS) would be increased by 66% from £624 per person per year to £1,035 per person per year.
His statement to the House of Commons made reference to the controversial Brexit referendum’s alleged goal of taking back the UK’s borders. He also praised the Conservative government for creating immigration systems “through which we can control who comes to the UK”, whilst also criticising the Conservative government for not going far enough by stating that his current five-point plan goes “even further” than anything previously, and that “we are taking more robust action than any government have before”.
Mr. Cleverly stated that “migration to this country is far too high and needs to come down” and said that “we have taken decision action to reduce legal migration”. His speech also talked of “curbing abuses” in the immigration system. What Mr. Cleverly did not mention was that it has been a Conservative government in power for the last 13 years and they are apparently still trying to resolve these issues.
It is not clear whether these planned changes will come into effect exactly as they have been mentioned by Mr. Cleverly, and it is also not clear whether they will affect people’s extensions for those already on routes to settlement. Colin Yeo, immigration Barrister and editor of Freemovement believes that these measures will only apply to new entrants but only time will tell.