Labour’s inhumane immigration proposals will destroy lives

Labour’s inhumane immigration proposals will destroy lives

14/05/2025

In announcing its anti-immigration White Paper this government has attempted to lay the blame of its own policies, and those of previous governments, at the feet of migrants. These are not policies yet though, they are proposals. A disturbing and depressing “wish list” of ideas to treat us as if we are somehow second class and disposable.

These proposals not only ignore the pain and suffering which the existing immigration systems causes on a daily basis, they seek to make it worse.  Among them, and there are many to criticise, the government has said that it wants to make people, who are currently on a five-year route to settlement have to wait and pay visa fees for ten years before they can settle.

Already we see people forced into destitution through extortionate visa costs. Through our visa fees campaign we have called for a cap on the length of settlement routes at five years. We have done this because we know the incalculable harm which leaving people on the ten-year routes’ causes. We have seen first-hand the way in which it increases precarity, and increases risks of both mental and physical health issues for those going through.

In calling for more people to be forced onto this route this government has treated migrants, through its proposals and the language used to defend them, as if we are nothing more than a disposable resource.

The proposals suggest that migrants who make “contributions to the UK economy and society” will be able to reduce their route to settlement to five years. These proposals would create different classes of migrants, those seen as deserving and undeserving.

We have heard politicians talk about “integration”, yet through proposals such as those announced this week, they are only creating more division, and more hostility to those who chose to build their lives, their families, their friendships in this country.

Most of us pay visa fees which can be seven to ten times the amount which processing of visas costs. On top of this we pay what is known as the Immigration Health Surcharge. All of this is on top of the taxes which so many people pay anyway. Yet we are told we “do not contribute”. We are told that living in our communities, our friends, our families, our co-workers, mean nothing beyond what we are seen to earn.

These proposals do not just affect us though. They affect those same communities, friends, families and co-workers. The affect everybody in this country. It is easy for politicians to blame migrants for lack of housing and an overwhelmed National Health Service, while ignoring that without us the very infrastructures they claim we are “breaking” would not exist for anyone.

These proposals seek to dehumanise us, we have been told  yet again, that we are not wanted, that we are a “burden”, that our lives mean “less than” someone else’s. We strongly condemn such language and ideas. We came to this country to live, not be treated as a target for this, or any, government to use to deflect from the genuine issues facing all of us.

This white paper, these proposals, entirely ignore the reality of immigration. They ignore our lives and experiences. The only thing which is achieved through this is that it will create more division, more discrimination, and more harm for people making their lives here.