The UK government is planning to make it significantly harder for migrants to obtain permanent residence, with proposals that could see them wait up to 20 years before becoming settled.
The proposed changes, which do not require legislation, would see the qualifying period for indefinite leave to remain doubled from five to ten years for most migrants, and increased to up to 20 years for some.
Migrants would also need to meet stricter eligibility requirements, including a clean criminal record, a higher English language standard, and earnings above £12,570 per year for at least three years.
The proposals would disproportionately affect those least likely to be in full-time employment, including dependants of people on work visas, family visa holders, and refugees.
The UK home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has cited the increasing number of people granted settlement as one of the drivers behind the reforms, with the figure reaching 163,000 in the year ending June 2025.
However, research suggests that deterrence-based policies like this are a weak tool for reducing immigration, with decisions to migrate driven primarily by conditions in countries of origin, not by entitlements in destination countries.
The proposals would make the UK an outlier compared to other major economies, with the closest equivalent to ILR in the EU requiring people to live on a valid visa for at least five years.
The UK government claims that making refugee status temporary and increasing the time for permanent residency contributed to asylum applications reaching a 40-year low in Denmark in 2025, but this drop coincided with broader EU-wide trends in asylum flows.
Raising the standard qualifying period for permanent residence to ten years would make the UK more restrictive than most other comparable democracies in Europe and North America, and one of the strictest globally.
