People who have been granted asylum in the UK will no longer be given automatic settlement and family reunion rights – as part of a government effort to “reduce the pull factor for small boat crossings”.
To “make the system fairer”, Keir Starmer has announced changes to asylum policy that end a refugee’s so-called “golden ticket” rights to bring their family to the UK and earn settled residency status after five years. Automatic family reunification will end, and migrants granted asylum will have to wait 10 years and meet new “contribution-based” conditions before they can apply for indefinite leave to remain.
With Nigel Farage announcing his party’s intention to scrap all indefinite leave to remain, the government’s announcement “marks the latest hardening of Labour’s immigration policy in an attempt to stymie the popularity” of Reform UK, said The Times.
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What is the current process?
People who have been granted asylum used automatically to gain the right to petition for their spouse and children to join them in Britain. In early September, the government temporarily suspended applications to this family reunification scheme.
Refugees are also currently given the right to stay in the UK for five years, during which they can study, work and apply for benefits. When the five years are up, they can apply for indefinite leave to remain, which gives them the right to apply for a British passport.
The government has said it wants to “continue to play its role in welcoming genuine refugees” but this current system is “not fit for purpose”. It is therefore making the “route to settlement” longer. “There will be no golden ticket to settling in the UK,” said Starmer. People will have to earn it “by contributing to our country, not by paying a people smuggler to cross the Channel in a boat”.
How will things change?
The suspension of automatic family reunification rights will now become permanent – meaning refugees must meet the same requirements for family reunion as any other migrant.
Refugees will still be “entitled to a package of core protection” but will not be able to apply for indefinite leave to remain until they have been in the country for 10 years. Additionally, there will be new “contribution” requirements for indefinite leave to remain. These include being in work, making National Insurance contributions, not taking benefits, learning English “to a high standard”, having a “spotless” criminal record, and “giving back” to the local community.
Refugee advocates have expressed their concern. “Blocking our chance to settle or to reunite with family members still at risk of harm keeps people like us, and our children, on the outside, never really allowed to feel secure or like we truly belong,” Kolbassia Haoussou, a refugee and a director at the charity Freedom from Torture, told The Guardian. These measures “are taken straight from the populist playbook the government itself has condemned”.
There are also concerns that restricting legal paths to family reunion “only pushes more desperate people into the arms of smugglers” in an effort to reach their loved ones, Jon Featonby, chief policy analyst at The Refugee Council, told the paper.
How many people have arrived in the UK through the family reunification scheme?
Numbers have been rising. Between 2010 and 2020, refugee family reunion consistently accounted for 30% to 40% of the 10,000 to 20,000 people granted asylum-related permission to stay in the UK each year, according to the University of Oxford’s The Migration Observatory. By 2023, that total number had jumped significantly to 63,000, “partly due to family reunion”. In 2024, 19,700 people were issued with a family reunion visa – a “likely knock-on effect” of the government’s efforts to clear the backlog in asylum applications.
