As the Government today publishes its immigration white paper, children’s charities have reacted to say the reforms do not take account of children whose lives are determined by the immigration system, often leaving them in limbo.
The proposed reforms will leave people who come to the UK on short-term visas for longer before they can get permanent status (referred to as settlement), or indefinite leave to remain (ILR). Many visa-holders come to the UK alone but some foreign workers bring dependent children or have children while in the UK. Today, the Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium has highlighted a number of significant consequences of leaving these children and families on temporary visas:
- Many of these children’s futures lie in the UK and they will eventually be British citizens, but they will live without permanent status for longer;
- It will keep tens of thousands of children out of the mainstream systems designed to support children for longer. Children in families on temporary visas do not have access to the same childcare entitlements and cannot get child benefit or other benefits, even in times of crisis, despite paying the same taxes as everyone else;
- It will delay the point in time when a child born in the UK can register as a British citizen because this depends on their parent acquiring settlement.
Anita Hurrell, co-chair of the Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium, and head of policy and practice change at Coram Children’s Legal Centre, said:
We all know that children who grow up in this country are shaped by this country – they speak English, integrate and are de facto British. Leaving them on temporary visas for long periods of their childhoods cuts against this reality and is unfair. Children need permanence.
Too often the immigration system that determines thousands of children’s lives is designed without giving thought to them. We are asking the government to meet with these children and young people and take notice of them. They are future British citizens.
It is not at all clear that longer routes to settlement will limit the number of arrivals, as the government aims. But it will come at a cost for many children.
Chrisann Jarrett, chief executive of the campaign group We Belong, said:
These reforms fail to recognise the reality that thousands of young people who call the UK home are growing up in limbo. By extending the time children and young people must wait for permanent status, the government is denying them the stability they deserve.
There are young people thriving in our schools, contributing to our communities, and dreaming of futures here – yet they’re excluded from vital services simply because of their immigration status. We urge policymakers to put children and young people at the centre of these reforms and ensure their potential isn’t held back by a system that overlooks them.
Josephine Whitaker-Yilmaz, policy and public affairs manager at Praxis, said:
Doubling the length of pathways to settlement will double how long many children spend with no access to a safety net. We already know this leaves children at a higher risk of poverty than their peers with UK-born parents. For a government that’s apparently committed to ending child poverty, this proposal will have the opposite effect, pushing even more children below the poverty line.
A decade is a long time for anyone to wait for fundamental security of status, but it is an especially long time in a child’s life. After all, no-one gets a second childhood.
Amanda Shah, Senior Policy Officer at Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit, said:
At Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit we see how the lack of security and belonging caused by long routes to settlement casts a long shadow, impacting generation upon generation of families. The idea our government is planning to make this the reality for even more children in this country is appalling and runs counter to its aims to reduce child policy. These children need ministers to listen, and change course.
Although the white paper does briefly mention children who have grown up in the UK and those in care, a route for young people does not change the fact that these proposals will trap many thousands of children in situations of precarity.
In research Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit carried out with families already on the punishing ten-year route to settlement, parents told researchers how they saw their children’s health, wellbeing and mental health suffer, their education negatively affected and their future prospects harmed. As two mothers told researchers:
- ‘It’s made me, and my children, suffer a lot. We’ve been homeless for two years. I’m not well but I need to force myself to work.’
- ‘The prices are very high especially with the high costs of living. I’m not able to give my children the life they deserve as I’m constantly having to save money for the [next immigration] application.’
