Britain says many migrants will have to wait longer to win the right to stay

LONDON — The British government announced Monday that it will double the time many immigrants must wait before they can settle permanently in the country, though it exempted key workers and high earners from the changes.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said people who come to the U.K. on work visas will have to wait a decade to be granted permanent residency status, which carries the right to work, study, access free healthcare and claim benefits. But a higher income can speed up the process. People who earn at least $67,000 a year will have to wait only five years, as will public-sector workers including doctors, nurses and teachers. Immigrants with salaries above $167,000 a year can apply for settlement after three years.

Mahmood said the changes will be introduced during 2027 and will restore fairness to the immigration system by linking the right to settle to an immigrant’s contribution to Britain.

She told lawmakers that her own parents came to the U.K. from Pakistan half a century ago “because they knew we do things differently here, and that we value above all else fair play. It is my responsibility to ensure our migration system lives up to that ideal.”

The changes are a softening of proposals Mahmood made last year that drew opposition from some in the governing Labor Party. The original plan would have made lower-paid immigrant workers, including those who keep Britain’s care homes running, wait 15 years to settle permanently. Care workers will continue to be eligible for settlement after five years, as long as they earn at least $18,633 a year.

The median U.K. salary is about $52,000 a year.

Immigration has been a divisive political issue in Britain for decades, and was a major factor in the 2016 vote to leave the European Union, which allows freedom of movement across the nations of the bloc. The arrival of tens of thousands of asylum seekers across the English Channel in dinghies each year has kept the subject high on the political agenda.

The small-boat crossings have been depicted as a crisis by politicians including Nigel Farage of the hard-right party Reform UK, and have been used as a rallying point by anti-immigration activists.

Channel ports, housing for asylum seekers and even the lifeboat charity that rescues people in danger at sea have been targeted by anti-migrant protests encouraged by far-right activists.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s center-left Labor Party government says stepped-up law enforcement cooperation between Britain and France has helped reduce the number of people making the crossing so far this year by more than 40% compared with 2025.

Mahmood said that refugees “who have not come by a safe and legal route” such as a government-sponsored program will have to wait up to 20 years for permanent settlement, 30 years if they came by small boat.

Arrivals on small boats make up a fraction of total immigration, with most people entering the U.K. legally, on visas. Still, the rise of Reform UK has spurred the mainstream Labor and Conservative parties to toughen their stances on immigration.

Conservative immigration spokesman Chris Philp said Mahmood’s “U-turn” would cost $13 billion because more people will be able to receive benefits than under her initial proposal.

Liberal Democrat lawmaker Max Wilkinson said the government was “prioritizing tough rhetoric rather than a system that works.”

Critics of the changes say they are reacting to a surge in immigration that has passed. Net migration — the number of people entering the U.K. minus those who left — topped 900,000 in the year ending June 2023, driven in part by hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war in Ukraine and China’s clampdown in Hong Kong.

The number fell to 649,000 in the year to June 2024, and 204,000 in the year to June 2025, according to the Office for National Statistics. In the most recent period, the year to December 2025, the figure was 171,000.

Lawless writes for the Associated Press.