Coram has responded to the Home Secretary’s plans to reform the system for settlement in the UK, set out in Parliament today.
The plans announced include some important five-year routes for children but will keep thousands of children in limbo and bar some families from ever getting permanent status, with children in refugee families waiting up to 30 years for permanent settlement.
Whilst there has been an important change to the Home Office’s proposals (published last year for consultation), so that many care workers and their families who are already in the UK will settle after five years, other care workers will, alongside tens of thousands of skilled workers earning below £50,000, wait ten years, despite moving their lives and families to the UK on the expectation of being able to settle after five.
Coram has welcomed that some children will remain on their existing pathways and not be brought into the earned settlement framework, including the five-year pathway for children and young adults who have grown up in the UK and the five-year pathway for unaccompanied children. Coram looks forward to working with the Government on the detail of this policy. Coram also welcomes that “recognised British connections” will qualify for a five-year pathway and that this includes parents of British children.
However, Coram would have liked to see the policy for child dependants changed so that the child settles with their first settling parent and is very concerned for children in families who will face a ten-year route. This will include:
- Child dependants earning under £50,000 outside public sector jobs like doctors and teachers or social care;
- Child dependants of care workers who have not earned £25,000 working in the social care sector in recent years.
Coram is also deeply concerned for families who will face an even longer route or may never be able to settle at all. This will include:
- Children in refugee families who will have to wait 30 years if they came by small boat, “earned down” to 20 years through work or study;
- Children, including disabled children, whose families rely on benefits who will have to show five years without claiming support before applying;
- Children whose families will have to wait 20 years due to an immigration breach like overstaying a visa;
- Children whose parents do not together earn £25,142;
- Children with parents who fall foul of “disqualifying criteria”, which appear to be an inflexible barrier that could bar people settling altogether. This could mean a British child has a parent who can never settle because they have a criminal record, do not meet the English standard, have taxpayer debt or have not made three years of national insurance contributions.
Coram is also deeply concerned that, contrary to previous indications, people who claimed asylum before 2 March 2026 are included in the earned settlement framework, even including those who already hold refugee status.
Anita Hurrell, Head of Policy at Coram Children’s Legal Centre, said:
We welcome some recognition of the position of children in the immigration system including the Home Office keeping a five-year pathway for children and young people who have grown up in the UK, families with British children and unaccompanied children seeking asylum. However, under the revised proposals, too many children will grow up in families facing an arduous, stressful and expensive ten-year route to settlement, including child dependants of skilled workers earning under £50,000 who came to the UK on the expectation of a five-year route. Still more children will grow up in families on even longer routes – or families never able to settle at all. We are shocked by the proposal for children in refugee families to wait 30 years and show they have not claimed benefits. This is not in line with our legal or moral obligations to displaced children and it is even more alarming if this policy will be applied retrospectively to people who gained refugee status in recent years whom we thought were transitionally protected.
