Photo by Benjamin Cremel/AFP
Without most of the country ever having used or heard the word, Reform UK are preparing to reverse the “Boriswave”. On Monday morning (22 September), Nigel Farage announced plans to abolish Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR), replacing it with visas that require migrants to reapply every five years. This would affect hundreds of thousands of migrants already living in the UK. Reform presents the policy as a response to mass migration – specifically the surge of migration that occurred under the governments of Boris Johnson – and its perceived impacts on welfare spending and social integration. These are issues that mainstream parties have gradually acknowledged. But while the policy claims to address the wrongs of migration, it risks undermining human dignity, social cohesion, and the long-term stability of British society. Though Reform is selling its policy as a response to mere numbers, something more elemental is at stake.
Some of the detriments of migration that Reform identify are legitimate. While the aesthetics of an integrated society are subjective – and it’s no coincidence that the term “Boriswave” originated in the swamps of the Online Right – pressures on housing, public services, and economic integration cannot be ignored. Recent months have seen public frustration with poorly managed migration spill onto the streets, from hotel protests to the Operation Raise the Colours movement and Tommy Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom rally. Parties like Reform have gained political traction by tapping into this sentiment, promising aggressive crackdowns and mass deportations. Yet framing immigration (and as a result ILR) as inherently negative risks oversimplifying the problem. The volume, speed, type, and purpose of individuals’ arrivals all matter, and policy must be carefully calibrated to reflect these distinctions.
On a human level, there are hidden costs to scrapping ILR. While Farage frames the policy as targeting the Boriswave migrants, in reality it would also affect families and long-settled residents, people who are rooted in their communities and active participants in civic life. No one wants to risk repeating Windrush-style injustices, yet that danger is real. Communities could be destabilised, civic trust eroded, and long-standing residents alienated.
The practical consequences are equally significant. For example, someone who loses ILR and becomes subject to visa renewal could be treated as a higher credit risk by banks, affecting remortgaging, refinancing, or moving home. Families could be left in limbo, continuing to pay mortgages without a guarantee of long-term residence, or forced to sell if renewal is denied. Beyond households, the state would face the administrative burden of repeated reapplications, appeals, and legal challenges, with costs that may outweigh the supposed savings.
But it also raises a deeper question: what does it mean to belong? ILR was created to grant permanent residence to long-term migrants who are integrated and contributing, while maintaining a distinction from full citizenship. It balanced Britain’s need for immigration control with fairness and stability for settled families. Reform’s proposal is not a simple bureaucratic adjustment; it reshapes the moral and social contract between migrants and host society. Residency under the new system becomes transactional: migrants are allowed to stay only if they meet the state’s criteria every five years. This discourages deep integration, including home ownership, community investment and intergenerational stability, because security is always provisional. The result could be a class of semi-permanent outsiders – people who live in Britain for decades yet never feel fully accepted, their belonging dependent on utilitarian calculations.
Abolishing ILR is a blunt instrument. It does not address the front-end drivers of immigration, such as visa allocation, recruitment policy, asylum intake, or enforcement. Instead, it weakens the mechanism that allows newcomers to integrate and therefore stabilise migration. If the goal is to reduce overall numbers, more direct tools are available: strengthening the removal of overstayers and illegal entrants, raising visa salary thresholds, limiting dependants on certain visa categories, or recalibrating the pathway from temporary visas to settlement and citizenship. All of these measures can be done without dismantling ILR.
And this points to the true purpose of the policy. Reform’s proposal is deliberately more symbolic than substantive; it projects toughness but risks collateral damage to integration and social stability. Their critique of ILR is misleading, framing it primarily as a welfare loophole that rewards migrants who contribute little economically. In reality, ILR grants settlement rights, while welfare eligibility depends on work history, residency, and means-testing – not ILR itself. By equating ILR with benefit access, Reform creates the false impression that permanent residence rewards non-working or “undeserving” migrants. This framing ignores the fact that many ILR-holders are fully contributing members of society. A strategic approach would preserve ILR as an anchor of integration, while tightening entry points and transition pathways where numbers are actually determined.
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Dismantling ILR, by contrast, could sow distrust, fracture cohesion, and erode Britain’s moral and social fabric. A responsible migration policy is not only about reducing numbers. It must preserve the dignities of civic life as they currently stand – the very things that attract people to Britain in the first place.
[Further reading: No one will escape Reform’s immigration plans]
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