After 14 years, it's time a Home Secretary learned from mistakes of the past

This blog was written by Nick Beales, Head of Campaigning at RMJ.

14 years ago this week, Theresa May introduced the 10-year route to settlement as she expanded the “hostile environment”. 

Like many policies May and subsequent Home Secretaries have introduced, the 10-year route is counter-productive and does nothing to actually manage immigration numbers. It makes peoples’ lives far more difficult though, including at the Home Office itself. Predictably, but no less depressingly, current Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has looked at this failed model and concluded the problem is that 10 years simply isn’t long enough; people should be forced to wait even longer to secure settlement. 

Having worked at RMJ for 12 years, many people I supported in my first 2 years may now have done their time and finally qualify for settlement. I’ve made at least 391 applications for people on or looking to enter the 10-year route. 202 of these were visa renewal applications for people already on the route; 189 were for people looking to regularise their status. 

Of those 391, I am aware of 9 people whose applications were refused and left the UK. There are 7 more whose applications were refused, but I am unsure whether they remain here. At most though, 16 people left the UK. A far higher number, 41, saw applications refused but either overturned this on appeal or subsequently regularised their status anyway. 

In 12 years, I have only seen 2 visa renewal applications refused for people on the 10-year route already. The first was way back in 2015 and was a desperately sad case of a woman with severe mental health problems, referred to us the day her visa expired. We submitted a hastily prepared application to preserve her status, which was refused. She disengaged and I do not know what happened to her. She is the only person I’ve worked with who was on the 10-year route and may have since departed the UK. 

The second renewal application I’ve seen refused was earlier this year. It is for a couple, grandparents to British children, who’ve lived here for over 19 years. The government refused their application because their own children are now adults and the couple have not yet been here for 20 years. We are appealing and, by current estimates, the appeal may take place in 2028. By then, this ageing couple will have lived here for well over 20 years and I am confident the government will withdraw and allow the application, rendering the refusal decision pointless, though hugely distressing for the couple themselves. 

This is the 10-year route in a nutshell. Ineffective in terms of reducing numbers; brutal in terms of its impact on families’ day-to-day lives and attempts to establish themselves in the UK. 

And, trust me, it is brutal. 

I’ve witnessed single mothers sobbing uncontrollably as they’re unable to afford application fees and therefore will fall out of immigration status. 

I’ve seen parents of UK born children with disabilities ripped apart and shoved in detention centres. Only for the parent to then be released and given leave on the 10-year route, rendering the detention deeply traumatic for all involved but achieving nothing. 

I’ve seen multiple people miss visa renewal deadlines for a multitude of entirely innocent reasons. This has seen them lose work rights and have the 10-year clock reset, meaning they actually face a 12.5, 15 or even 17.5 year route to settlement. The worst of these cases was most recently, where a single mother was denied settlement after completing her 10-year route as once during that period she submitted a renewal application a single day late. 

I’ve seen the Home Office on its knees, unable to cope with the massive amount of work it has created for itself processing all these repetitive renewal applications. Of my 200 successful renewal applications, the vast majority will just have repeated the same facts and circumstances as 2.5, 5 or 7.5 years prior, such as that the person was and still is the parent of a British child. The Home Office now takes over a year to process these applications, despite almost certainly having reviewed all relevant evidence at least once previously.

I’ve seen application fees rise to an unsustainable level whilst living standards continue to fall. When I started, an application cost £601.00. It now costs £3,994.50. Imagine paying that and then waiting a year for a decision. 

This is the 10-year route. 

A system that creates far more work than the government can handle, does not reduce numbers, but makes life far more difficult for those families forced to endure it. Successive governments seem not to have understood this or, if they have understood, simply don’t care and favour dysfunction and headlines over sensible-headed policy and processes. 

The current government has been warned by RMJ and others across the sector that their plans to extend settlement routes will make things far worse. Sadly, like their predecessors, they seem to have fallen into the trap of mistaking treating people here badly as being the same as stopping people coming in the first place. 

In another 12 years, I suspect I’ll be able to largely rinse and repeat this blog.