Just eight months ago Shabana Mahmood’s Home Office published a document called,  ‘A Fairer Pathway To Settlement’ which described the Boriswave as an ‘extraordinary open border experiment’, in which an additional 2.6 million people moved to this country between 2021 and 2024.

Many of these arrived under the health and care visa. This was a disastrous policy – as the Home Office pointed out at the time, in an ‘attempt to fill between 6,000 and 40,000 jobs’ in the care sector, we imported ‘616,000 individuals from 2022 to 2024’. Even worse, over ‘half were not even arriving to work in that sector but were instead dependants of those who were’. The Home Office added that ‘fraud… was rife’.

Those people who arrived during the Borswave are generally low-paid and older, meaning they have fewer working years ahead of them. Under the current rules they are allowed to ‘settle’, gaining Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) after being in the country for five years. Once a migrant is granted ILR, they can access benefits, are eligible for social housing and any children they have are automatically British citizens. They can also sponsor more family members to join them in the UK. Just a year after being granted ILR,........

© The Spectator