Shabana Mahmood has barely softened her plans – Britain’s immigration regime is now a theatre of cruelty | Owen Jones

Five years ago, Shabana Mahmood called for a “general amnesty” for undocumented migrants. “That’s not official Labour party policy yet,” she mourned, “but myself and a group of other Labour MPs are continuing to make the argument.”

Now home secretary, she is introducing one of Europe’s most punitive immigration and asylum systems. The standard qualifying period for migrant workers to gain secure residence will double to 10 years, which will be twice the length set out in almost all EU countries. The standard wait for refugees who claim asylum in Britain outside designated resettlement routes will be 20 years, four times the usual five-year qualifying period in Germany, Spain and Italy.

But even this is misleading. As the Home Office notes: “There are no visa routes to enable people to claim asylum in the UK from overseas.” As it further adds: “A person must be present in the UK to claim asylum here.” So accessing this punitive process by regular means is in essence impossible.

Mahmood has reopened an exceptionally limited resettlement scheme, with Afghan women and girls and Palestinians expected to account for about a quarter of referrals. The latter is a shamelessly cynical sop to progressive voters infuriated by Labour’s complicity in Israel’s genocide. And previously exceptions have been made for travel to Britain for humanitarian reasons: from Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan. But if you’re seeking to flee persecution in, say, Iran, Eritrea or Somalia, you cannot legally apply for asylum. Arriving by small boat is your only shot. For those who do and have their asylum claims accepted, a wait of up to 30 years for permanent residency beckons.

Eleven years ago, Mahmood spent three days at a refugee camp in Greece and wrote about her experiences in the New Statesman. “You would run,” she told her readers. “I would run. They are running. We must do our part to help them.”

Bear in mind that Britain receives fewer asylum applications per capita than the EU average. Bear in mind, too, that nearly seven in 10 of the world’s refugee population are hosted by low- and middle-income nations. Remember also the role of Britain in violence that has caused destabilisation and accelerated population movements – such as the wars in Iraq and Libya, the latter of which Mahmood voted for.

Yes, there has been a partial retreat on social care workers, with those who entered the route before May 2025 and meet the relevant conditions able to apply for indefinite leave to remain after five years. But consider how the social care sector has already been plunged into crisis by Britain’s “cut off its nose to spite its face” immigration policies. New international recruits plunged from 105,000 to 30,000 in the space of two years – while the sector has nearly 100,000 vacancies. Mahmood’s concessions will not reverse that crisis.

Here is why these policies are such a travesty. The fundamental breach of trust is a violation of any principles of natural justice. When Mahmood’s Conservative predecessor Theresa May introduced a £35,000 settlement salary threshold in 2012, she exempted migrants who had obtained qualifying work visas before April 2011. Mahmood, on the other hand, is applying the 10-year baseline to many of those already lawfully resident. That’s despite many migrants and their families having made plans around what was promised to them. Half a million people will be hit by this promise-breaking.

What of the rampant classism of someone who earns more than £125,000 qualifying in only three years, while someone below £50,000 normally waits 10? The New Economics Foundation once released research that found that a childcare worker generated up to £9.50 of social value for every pound they were paid; a hospital cleaner created £10; a recycling worker produced £12. A City banker, on the other hand, destroyed £7 of social value for every pound they generated; that was £11 for an advertising executive and £47 for a tax-avoidance accountant. But these exorbitantly paid occupations have a three-year pathway, compared with 10 years for underpaid crucial workers.

Mahmood has at least recognised that nurses, teachers and care workers offer contributions that cannot be captured by salary alone. But why doesn’t this principle apply to other workers?

Then there’s the supposed party of labour undermining the collective bargaining power of workers by keeping them dependent on employer-sponsored visas for a decade. Even the Home Office has admitted that settlement can improve wages because workers have the freedom to change jobs. These plans will damage migrant and British-born workers alike. “This creates downward pressures across sectors as a whole,” the Trades Union Congress notes, “as sponsorship impedes workers’ ability to campaign for better pay and conditions or fight back against poor treatment.”

Then there’s requiring migrants to have gone five years without accessing specified state support before qualifying for settlement on the standard route, or face a longer wait – although the exact scope and exemptions are not yet clear. People with disabilities could be punished, while parents may be forced to impose hardship on their children in order to gain permanent residency.

All of this is based on a pernicious lie that both media and political establishments have promoted in Britain: that immigration is responsible for our country’s problems. Not the financial sector, which plunged the country into a disaster from which we have never recovered. Not greedy exploitative bosses not paying their workers properly after the labour movement was permanently hobbled in the 1980s. Not an economic order rigged in favour of Big Finance and assets instead of productive industry, or politicians who won’t build the housing we need. No, it was migrants who became the scapegoat.

Well, now that a hostile environment has well and truly been constructed for migrants, who will the scapegoaters have to blame?

• Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist