Why I want migrants to wait 10 years before obtaining UK citizenship.
The Conservative Party leader, Kemi Badenoch has set out her position on immigration control, calling for tougher measures on both legal and illegal migration to ensure fairness for British citizens.
Speaking in a piece she wrote for the Daily Mail UK, Badenoch said: “The issue of immigration is a simple one for the Conservative Party: we need to crack down on it in every form, both legal and illegal.”
“For me, this is about basic fairness. Britain today seems to work more favourably for those who jump the queue, who break the rules, who get into our country illegally but then denigrate our customs and our culture.”
She added: “And those of us who work hard and do the right thing, hoping one day to leave a better life for our children, are left footing the bill.”
Badenoch highlighted the government’s spending on asylum seekers, noting: “The billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money we are spending to put asylum seekers up in hotels, for example, is well known.”
But she stressed a lesser-known issue: “Less well known, however, is the fact that low-paid immigrants and refugees who stay here for five years qualify for ‘indefinite leave to remain’. This allows them to claim the same benefits British citizens are entitled to, such as social housing and Universal Credit.”
“They become automatically entitled to make such claims regardless of whether they’ve paid taxes or have simply lived off the state throughout those five years.”
“To my mind, that is fundamentally unfair to all the hard-working Brits who have dutifully paid into the system – and I’m determined to stop it.”
Badenoch criticized the Labour Government for opposing key immigration reforms. “But it’s likely to come as no surprise that the Labour Government has no such interest.”
She pointed to Labour’s rejection of the Deportation Bill: “It voted against our Deportation Bill last month, which would have introduced a strict cap on the number of newcomers to these shores, as well as doubling the time it takes for immigrants to be able to claim benefits from five to ten years.”
“The same ten-year rule would also apply to people seeking the privilege of British citizenship, up from the current five years.”
“And, to make sure those who come here are serious about contributing to our society, rather than just ripping it off, the Bill would have barred anyone who’d claimed benefits from getting indefinite leave to remain.”
“It would also have given the government the power to remove settled status from those who commit any crime – preventing them from claiming that precious British passport.”
“All in all, that Bill was designed to protect our borders and uphold fairness in our benefits system.”
“But thanks to Labour, it was shot down.”
The Tory leader acknowledged the legal challenges that have stalled previous policies: “To be honest, many – if not all – of the measures it contained would probably have ended up going the same way as the former government’s abandoned scheme to deport illegal immigrants to Rwanda.”
“That became bogged down in our courts and frustrated by unnamed foreign judges interpreting the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).”
“Other potentially transformative policies of ours have floundered in similar ways.”