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Published : 21 Nov 2025, 11:58 AM
The UK government will prevent migrants from accessing welfare benefits until they obtain British citizenship under sweeping changes to immigration rules.
According to The Telegraph, the overhaul, described as the most far-reaching changes to settlement rights in decades, would mean that foreign nationals may have to wait as long as 30 years before they qualify for settled status, and then an additional one to three years to secure citizenship.
At present, most migrants can claim benefits once they receive indefinite leave to remain (ILR), typically after five years.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said the measures were needed to “replace a broken immigration system” and to ensure that settlement in the UK “is not a right, but a privilege, and it must be earned”.
The Telegraph reports that the new rules will apply retrospectively to many post-Brexit arrivals, including 1.6 million skilled frontline workers such as doctors, nurses and teachers. High earners and workers on “global talent” visas could still qualify for ILR in as little as three to five years.
Low-paid workers, including hundreds of thousands who arrived on health and social care visas since 2022, would face a baseline wait of 15 years for settlement, rising to 25 years if they have claimed benefits for more than 12 months.
Illegal migrants or visa overstayers who cannot be removed from the UK could face a wait of up to 30 years for settlement.
The proposed reforms would “shift the default position on access to benefits to citizenship rather than settlement,” the Home Office policy document "A Fairer Way to Settlement" says, according to The Telegraph.
Between 600,000 and 800,000 foreign nationals hold ILR at any given time, but that number could rise sharply in coming years due to what the paper describes as the “Boriswave” of arrivals.
The newspaper also reports that nearly 500 migrants a day are currently signing up for Universal Credit, with overall migrant benefit claimants rising to 1.27 million, up nearly 50 percent since 2022.
Under the proposed rules, all migrants would be required to meet minimum conditions before qualifying for ILR. These include having worked for at least three years, owing no outstanding debts to the state, speaking English to a high standard and having a clean criminal record. Community or voluntary service could shorten the wait by several years, while high earners would be fast-tracked.
The reforms come as Labour attempts to shore up its poll numbers against Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which has proposed removing ILR from hundreds of thousands of non-EU citizens and forcing them to reapply under stricter criteria.
