So much for calmer waters. Immigration is entangled with a national conversation about identity and culture, and back to the top of the political agenda. The flags of St George, Palestine and the Union Jack are claimed and displayed across swathes of the UK, and even political parties want to get in on the act. Temperatures were high all summer; demonstrations outside commandeered migrant hotels were a regular news feature; and poll after poll showed that after a brief post-Brexit, post-pandemic relaxation of views and borders, public opinion has tilted sharply in favour of tighter immigration controls. Hostility to unlawful entrants is rising, and a sense of panic is setting in.
We take a look at how this febrile landscape developed; how it is driving Government policy on legal migration; and what that could mean for employers whose business models are still geared to imported skills and labour.
UK immigration in 2025: political context and public opinion
Having shut down the Conservative’s Rwanda scheme as a “gimmick”, the Labour Government promised to “smash the gangs”; but it hasn’t been able to do that. Arrivals through illegal small boat crossings look set to break all previous records in 2025; the gangs are bolder, the boats bigger. Overall, net migration is falling and is now some way below the unprecedented highs of the Boris Johnson years. Yet the economy stalls, the jobs market shrinks and pressure on public services grows. It is lawful economic migration, much of it through the sponsorship-led Points Based System, that has driven the unprecedented numbers, not those seeking asylum. The Labour inheritors of the “Boriswave” are blamed for a perceived lack of control and challenged to deliver change before a resurgent populist party upends the political boat.
All washed up: the “Boriswave” migration peak
With Brexit Party (aka Reform UK) help, Boris Johnson won a General Election landslide in December 2019 promising to deliver Brexit and “Take back control of our borders”. The EA separation agreement that followed required an overhaul of the UK economic migration rules to decouple us from EEA free movement legislation. The Boris adjustments that followed, disingenuously re-badged as a “New” economic migration system, lowered skill and salary thresholds for skilled worker entry and boosted third country recruitment in the health and social care sector, locking in a low wage, low-skill model in the process and enabling a flow of family dependents to follow. Non-EEA migration hit its highest ever levels. More people have entered Britian with the option of settlement in 25 years than in the previous 2,500 but here, in the early 2020s, it peaked. Ironically, Nigel Farage now invokes the “Boriswave” he helped facilitate.
As the 5-year qualifying period for Indefinite Leave to Remain sails into view, the largest ever number of once temporary migrants are about to become permanent.
Turning back the tide? Thresholds and restrictions
The Sunak shift in 2023–24
Fast forward to another General Election year, and Rishi Sunak was feeling the heat; he wanted to draw a line and throw the economic migration machine into reverse. In April 2024, following a Migration Advisory Committee report, the outdated salary thresholds underpinning eligible Skilled Worker codes were updated from Standard Occupational Classification 2010 to 2020. There were, and still are, transitional provisions for those already in the system, but the alleged undercutting of wages was curbed for new entrants. This alone should have had a greater impact on actual numbers than the now-scrapped Rwanda scheme for illegal migrants; whatever the case, this election was not Rishi Sunak’s to win.
Labour’s 2025 White Paper: restoring control
Having been elected on a promise of action, the Labour Government’s White Paper Restoring Control over the Immigration System was published in May 2025 with stated aim of growing the UK’s domestic workforce, ending reliance on overseas labour and boosting economic growth. The Statement of changes to the Immigration Rules: HC 997, 1 July 2025 saw sweeping changes implemented from 22nd of that month; more than 180 eligible occupations were removed from the eligibility list, salary thresholds were further increased and the default Skill Level returned from RQF3 to the pre-2020 RQF6, citing “growth in visa numbers, and concerns about exploitation of overseas recruits… particularly seen in occupations below RQF level 6”. That said, a new interim Temporary Shortage List re-imports many of the removed occupations for those already in the system and an expanded Immigration Salary List allows employers to assign Certificates of Sponsorship in occupations at RQF levels 3-5 where the Migration Advisory Committee had previously identified as being in shortage in its 2023 and 2024 reviews. The ability of lower-skilled, lower paid roles to support dependent visas has also been curbed.
The main challenges facing sponsors of migrant skilled workers now are navigating the increasingly complex array of tables and lists set out in the Appendices to the immigration rules to work out which skill and salary thresholds apply respectively to existing employees who may or may not be sponsored, new sponsored migrants, or those under change of employment conditions who are moving from another sponsor. In cases where offers were made, for example to graduate employees, many months in advance of the changes, there can be major financial and practical implications for sponsors.
Illegal working clampdown: risks for employers
Although the criminal offence of employing an illegal worker was introduced in 1996, and the dual civil/criminal penalty regime from 2008, only in more recent times has there been major investment in enforcement. Gradual digitisation of right to work checks, refinements to the checking and verification processes leave employers with fewer excuses; but many still miss the fundamental point that an illegal worker need not be an illegal entrant; many are lawfully in the UK, albeit temporarily, but not permitted to do the work in question.
New Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is noted for a tough stance on immigration policy and has indicated that a further stepping up of focused enforcement activity is likely to extend beyond the familiar high-risk sectors of fast-food retail, nail bars, the care sector and cleaning contractors. The Government wants to dissuade employers including large ones, of undercutting wages and under-investing in upskilling the resident workforce by leaning on imported foreign workers. It has become clear – as Government minister Matthew Pennycook had to concede when responding to a BBC investigation this week – that the easy availability of work in the UK’s particularly large, unregulated and unpoliced illegal jobs market is a major “pull factor” for unlawful entrants that also hurts the legitimate economy and those who work, or seek work, in it.
There has never been a better or more pressing time for sponsor licence holders in particular to review their recruitment polices and right to work checks and processes.
Is time up for Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR)?
The concept of Permanent Residence was an EU-law import interpreted through the lens of UK law for EEA nationals only. It is residually protected by the EU separation agreement for those already holding it... but that is all. “Settlement”, or “Indefinite Leave to Remain” (ILR) whereby time limits and all other restrictions are removed from a person’s stay, on application and once certain thresholds are reached, has always been, as the name states, indefinite. Failure to maintain it through residence can result in its revocation.
Until the early 2000s, the default qualifying period was 4 years. It increased to 5 years for most personal and work categories after that, with a few exceptions for accelerated grants to major investors and a longer period of 10 or even 14 years. Not every category qualifies, and not all that are eligible can be amalgamated. The Government has mooted a doubling of the default period from five to 10 years. This week, Reform UK has gone further and announced it will scrap ILR altogether if elected to Government, using statutory powers to revoke all grants and downgrade status to limited leave.
What is most likely to happen? The perceived unfairness of moving the goalposts for those already on a 5-year track leans toward transitional provisions; there is also the offset option to reduce the qualifying period for those making the greatest contribution through categorised exceptionally high skills or economic contribution. At this stage, the Government has not committed, and parliamentary discussion has been tentative. But it is a major point to watch, and an indication of how serious the party that once presided over the greatest liberalisation of immigration has become about restricting it.
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