UK: More than 120 organisations call out government's proposals on earned settlement
Topic
Country/Region
17 February 2026
Alongside over 120 organisations, Statewatch is calling out the UK government’s proposals and the accompanying consultation on earned settlement. The government’s proposals would disproportionately punish refugees and racialised communities, by imposing hierarchical and discriminatory standards for those pursuing settlement.
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Image: Hernán Piñera, CC BY-SA 2.0
This statement was coordinated by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants
We oppose the government’s earned settlement proposals and the accompanying consultation in its entirety.
The proposals and consultation are fundamentally racist and classist. They attack all our communities and, if implemented, would undermine everyone’s rights and conditions – whether you are born in the UK or not.
The aim is to create an even more racist and hostile environment in this country, with a hyper-exploited, hyper-insecure and hyper-precarious underclass of largely racialised workers. This is wrong and unjust. It will ultimately result in a lowering of standards and conditions for all workers to the benefit of exploitative bosses, regardless of where they are born. The wording and framing of the earned settlement consultation itself reflects these racist and classist aims.
The proposals also seek to further punish refugees and people seeking protection; people whose movements are often due to lasting harms caused by historic and ongoing colonisation.
Settlement is a right
Settlement is a right. Everyone should have the right to feel safe and stable wherever they live, in the knowledge that they can stay permanently and build their lives, relationships, families, and communities.
Our immigration system already undermines and damages our communities, keeping our friends, neighbours and colleagues in precarious living situations and conditions. People are already forced to wait to begin their lives, and made to jump through long, draining bureaucratic hoops to get settlement rights – often waiting decades to get permanent status.
Our position is clear: everyone, no matter where they were born or when they arrived here, should have the right to stay here permanently and build their lives, relationships and communities.
Government attacks on workers
The government’s attempts via the proposals and consultation to create a hierarchy of workers based on the type of job they do, specifically targeting and devaluing health and care work, is shameful. It is an attempt to divide and rule our communities by constructing categories of the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ migrant. There are no such categories and there is no such hierarchy.
Many migrants from Britain’s former colonies were forced to fight for the empire on the frontlines in World War Two to win their countries’ independence. Meanwhile, their own countries’ economies were decimated and underdeveloped by British colonial governments. Their demands for reparation have been ignored and denied.
They were encouraged to migrate to Britain to rebuild the country after the war and they continue to form the backbone of the labour force that keeps the country running, whilst being highly exploited and precarious: as delivery and taxi drivers in the gig economy; as care workers in nursing homes; as nurses and doctors on the frontlines of the NHS; as cleaners and transport workers essential to keeping all workers safe, well and able to travel. Many of these people along with others were labelled ‘key workers’ during the height of the Coronavirus pandemic, and yet have been disgracefully discarded by this government.
This labour exploitation and precarity is rooted in a colonial system that racialises and exploits the global majority and the entire multiracial working class. It seeks to divide and rule by creating classes of the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ migrant.
We reject all such categories and class divides. The colonial border regimes created by the British state are intended to keep the conditions of all workers down; to divide workers to prevent them from uniting and fighting back; and to enrich the corporations and the military industrial complex by paying them billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to enforce inhuman border regimes. We say: no more.
Recourse to public funds
Migrant workers built Britain. But in the end, no matter how much tax someone pays, what jobs they do, or how much money they earn, everyone should have the right to access basic services like public healthcare, housing and support. Anyone, no matter where they were born, might need access to this social support and we as a society should provide it, ‘from the cradle to the grave’.
People seeking protection
The government’s proposals attempt to even further criminalise and illegalise the only routes available to refugees and people seeking protection. There are no safe routes for people to seek protection in this country, and the government refuses to create any.
The government is seeking to create a false moral panic about ‘illegality’ to scapegoat people fleeing for their lives, conditions which are usually directly or indirectly a result of centuries of colonial extractivism, violence and genocide.
It’s time to resist
We call on all social and labour movement forces to unite and reject these government proposals.
We support all efforts to protest, strike and resist this government and the Home Secretarys cruel and draconian onslaught on the rights and freedoms of people who move. Whether it takes months, years, or decades, we will dismantle Britain’s colonial border regime.
Signatories:
Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants
Abigail Housing
Action Against Detention & Deportations
Action for Refugees in Lewisham
After Exploitation
Alarm Phone London
All African Women’s Group
Angels of Freedom CIC
Another Europe is Possible
Aseekers
Asylum Matters
Asylum Welcome
Bahay Kubo Housing Association
Bakers Food and Allied Workers Union
Baobab Women’s Project CIC
BARAC UK
BEACON Bradford
Beyond Detention
Birth Companions
Books Against Borders
Bristol Defend the Asylum Seekers Campaign
Bristol Law Centre
Camden Anti-Raids
Care4Calais
Climate Justice Coalition
Communist Party of Great Britain
Cotton Tree Trust
Diversity Matters North West Ltd
Duhra Solicitors
East and Southeast Asians North East
End Deportations Belfast
End Violence Against Women Coalition (EVAW)
English Class Language School
Evesham Vale Welcomes Refugees
Existing Skilled Migrants Forum
FODI (Friends Of the Drop In for asylum seekers and refugees, Sunderland)
forRefugees
Fresh Eyes
Girlington Community Centre
Global Justice Cambridge
Global Women Against Deportations
Govan Community Project
Hackney Antiraids
Hackney Independent Socialist Group
Hackney Migrant Centre
Haringey Migrant Support Centre (HMSC)
Haringey Welcome
Hastings Community of Sanctuary
Hay Brecon and Talgarth Sanctuary for Refugees
Herts for Refugees
Iona Community
Ice&Fire Theatre
India Labour Solidarity
Indian Workers’ Association GB
Indoamerican Refugee and Migrant Organisation (IRMO)
Insaafi CIC
Iraqi Association
Jewish Voice for Liberation
Kanlungan Filipino Consortium
Latin American Women’s Rights Service (LAWRS)
Law Centre NI
Left Book Club
Legal Action for Women
Lesbians And Gays Support the Migrants
Lewisham Refugee and Migrant Network (LRMN)
Long Residence Advocacy Group
Manchester Refugee Support Network
Medact
Middle Eastern Women and Society Organisation-MEWSO
Migrant Advocacy Service
Migrant Justice Manchester
Migrant Workers’ Union – NI
Migrante UK
Migrants’ Rights Network
National Survivor User Network (NSUN)
New Arrivals Support CIC
No More Exclusions
No To Hassockfield
Northamptonshire Rights and Equality Council
Nottingham & Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum
Oasis church
One Roof Leicester
Palestinian Youth Movement
Patients Not Passports
Patients not Passports Cambridge
Peaceful Borders
POMOC
Positive Action in Housing
Quaker Asylum and Refugee Network – QARN
Radio Calais
Rainbow Migration
Rainbow Refugees NI
RAMFEL (Refugee & Migrant Forum of Essex and London)
Refugee Action
Regularise
Reunite Families UK
Revoke
Rights of Women
Room To Heal
RootsMove
Roma Support Group
Routes
Scaffold Advocacy
School of Solidarity
Skipton Refugee Support Group
Solidarity Detainee Support
South London Refugee Association
South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum Action Group (SYMAAG)
Southampton Action
Southampton and Winchester Visitors Group
Southeast and East Asian Centre CIC (SEEAC)
Southeast and East Asian Women’s Association
Southwark & Lambeth Antiraids
Southwark Law Centre
Springboard Youth Academy
Statewatch
St Augustine’s Centre
St Thomas Church Asylum Seeker and Refugee Support Network
Tees Valley of Sanctuary
The Hummingbird Project
The Launchpad Collective
The William Gomes Podcast
the3million
Thread Ahead
Tulia Group CIC
UNISON City of Edinburgh Branch
University of Manchester UCU
Waltham Forest Migrant Action
Women Against Rape
Women for Refugee Women
Women of Colour in the Global Women’s Strike
Women’s Health Matters
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