Yes, she’s been very secretive about the extent of the policy as well. The media acts as if it’s still the original Yvette Cooper version (which was bad enough) but it really isn’t. It feels pretty systematically designed to force people out.

Yes I think this has happened before (eg Priti Patel being viewed much more harshly than Theresa May as Home Secretary despite overseeing a more liberal immigration policy in most areas).

But in Shabana Mahmood’s case the criticism is justified as her ’earned settlement’ policy is so extremist.

She’s basically the caricature a lot of Labour supporters had of Priti Patel but for real this time.

(I wasn’t a fan of Priti Patel, but she seemed pretty typical for a Conservative Home Secretary and I thought people were too quick to bring her ethnicity into debates.)

Actually this is even worse than I thought. If a university loses their sponsor license then all of their existing international students have to find a new course or leave the country. This will be catastrophic. An amber rating meant they can keep their students but with limits on new recruitment.

Much worse than mass deportations? It’ll just be the same thing.

I have been writing against it to raise awareness of how extreme it is and how this hasn’t really been recognised. But I also won’t vote for a Labour Party that is currently proposing a mass deportation policy. Mass deportation by people in red rosettes or turquoise rosettes is the same to me.

That’s what they’ve done. They’ve said care workers have to wait 15 years to get ILR. But they’ve also announced care workers can only renew their visa until July 2028 for a maximum of 5 years. Care workers first became eligible for a visa in February 2022 so no one can make 15 years.

How is mass deportation by stealth of hundreds of thousands of care workers who are legal immigrants (and maybe 99% aren’t white) not overtly racist? Yet that’s Labour policy.

@gsoh31.bsky.social worth looking into this as it looks like international student numbers have much further to fall.

Half of all universities expect to face restrictions- either a numerical cap on recruitment or an outright ban.

This is very significant. The January student intake is already down 1/3 on 2025 and that is before the new compliance rules take effect this June. It’ll only fall even further once universities start facing restrictions on international student recruitment.

I do struggle with long haul as I can’t sleep on planes. Was hard work going to Hong Kong.

When I went to Canada I had to try hard to find a day time flight.

I usually wake up at 8am on workdays even haha. Slightly earlier if I have to get to the office.

I never book flights that are too early in the morning. I want to make sure I catch them and no point spending my first day away falling asleep because I’m sleep deprived ‘to make the most of the day’.

The drop off in visa grants was already dramatic in Q4 of 2025 and visa applications suggest it’s even sharper in Q1 of 2026. If this is before the compliance regime even comes in then things can only fall further. The rejection rate for Pakistanis is now very high.

They didn’t even do it selfishly because they thought it would help them politically. They did it quietly without telling anyone, purely because they wanted to do it.

Even if you accept the argument that there was public support for reducing immigration, there was no public support for forcing hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants, mostly care workers, who’ve followed all the rules to leave the country (which is what the earned settlement policy is)

A side point, but worth noting in the above graph just how much higher the asylum grant rate was under the Conservatives than it is under Labour. This is particularly true for Afghans.

We’re probably looking at much lower numbers than 2025 (and 2022 and to a lesser extent 2024). But comparable to 2021 and 2023.

This has 2024. I can create one with the earlier years but don’t have one to hand. Basically August 2024 to July 2025 was the peak time for crossings (apart from 2022, particularly the second half of the year) and that peak wave has ended.

If we could get a deal with regulatory alignment to allow frictionless movement of goods and access to the benefits of the EU’s free trade agreements as part of the Customs Union then it would be a good compromise. I just don’t see the EU ever agreeing to that (if it’s even possible?)

A Customs Union in particular would not be a good landing position. Turkey have a Customs Union without being in the Single Market. They still have extensive border checks with the EU and it makes it harder to trade with the rest of the world. So it’s the worst of both worlds.

bsky.app/profile/jame...

I’ve never even tried to claim to be especially progressive. But I feel it now, because my views on immigration (that were once pretty middle of the road) haven’t changed and a lot of other people have changed to support more hostile policies on it. Earned Settlement was the breaking point.

Rishi brought immigration down to pre-Brexit levels. His family and asylum policies were bad, but most of the fall was from work visa policies that were valid.

Labour will bring it down much further. Fine I guess. But Earned Settlement, if it happens, is a mass deportation policy, which is fascist.

Tightening immigration rules would be one thing. But they’re going much further and retrospectively changing the rules to force hundreds of thousands of immigrants who are already here (and on the path to permanent residency) to leave the country. Earned Settlement is remigration by stealth.

It was pretty grim under New Labour to earn very little and then have to pay through the nose in tax, and not be eligible for a penny in tax credits while the chief exec at your work does get child tax credits. So I definitely appreciate the Conservatives for that.

Also under the Conservatives the minimum wage increased a lot (it was very low before) and they gave holiday pay to staff on zero hours contracts. Initially they cut taxes a lot for low earners too though this was later eroded.

Yes 25-30k sounds about right. Significantly lower than 2022, 2024 and 2025 but similar to 2021 and 2023.

I had to format the data a bit but it‘s not too tricky.