Earned Settlement: We Cannot Allow History to Repeat Itself.

On Monday evening, I had the privilege of attending an important event at the Palace of Westminster, hosted by Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP, bringing together Windrush survivors, migrant workers, immigration advisers, campaigners and organisations working across health, social care and racial justice.

I left with one overriding thought:

We cannot allow history to repeat itself.

The evening was about more than immigration rules. It was about belonging, justice, trust and what happens when governments change the rules for people who have organised their entire lives around promises previously made to them.

We heard directly from members of the Windrush generation, including Glenda Caesar.

Listening to the lived experience of Windrush is a sobering reminder of what immigration policy can do when human beings become statistics.

People who had lived in Britain for decades suddenly found themselves having to prove that they belonged here. Some lost employment. Some lost access to benefits and housing. Families suffered financially. Mental health deteriorated. People who had understood Britain to be their home were suddenly asked, in effect, to prove their right to exist within it.

The damage was not merely administrative.

It affected identity.

It affected dignity.

It affected families.

And it created a profound distrust of government that continues today.

That is why the current discussion about “earned settlement” cannot be treated as simply another technical change to the Immigration Rules.

Settlement is already earned.

A migrant who has spent years lawfully living in this country, complying with immigration conditions, working, paying tax and National Insurance, paying substantial visa fees and, in many cases, paying the Immigration Health Surcharge has already been contributing.

Many have had no recourse to public funds throughout that journey.

So we must ask: what exactly are we saying still needs to be “earned”?

For me, one of the most troubling aspects of the proposal is the idea of conditional belonging.

If someone entered a recognised immigration route on the understanding that, after meeting clearly defined conditions for a specified period, they could qualify for settlement, we should be extremely cautious about shifting the goalposts while they are already running the race.

You cannot invite someone to play a match under one set of rules and then change the rules halfway through.

That is not simply an immigration issue.

It is a matter of fairness and the rule of law.

It also makes very little economic sense.

We constantly hear political language separating migrants into the “high skilled” and “low skilled”, as though the value of a human being or their contribution to society can be measured entirely by their salary.

The pandemic should have taught us something about this.

The care worker bathing an elderly person, the cleaner keeping a hospital safe, the healthcare assistant supporting a patient, the radiographer, the nurse, the social worker and the doctor all form part of the same ecosystem.

There is no functioning health and social care system without people performing every part of that work.

At a time when employers are already struggling with recruitment and retention, creating even greater insecurity for workers who have built lives here risks pushing experienced people away from the very sectors in which this country needs stability.

And I believe we must also be willing to confront the political environment in which these policies are being discussed.

Migrants have become very easy political targets.

When there are pressures on housing, public services, wages or the NHS, it is tempting to find a group upon whom society can place the blame.

Too often that group is migrants.

They are spoken about as though they are parasites on the economy while remarkably little is said about how much they actually contribute through taxation, visa fees, the Immigration Health Surcharge and their labour.

People who work with migrants every day know that the reality is much more complicated than the political slogans.

I see people working extraordinary hours.

I see people paying thousands of pounds to keep their families lawfully in this country.

I see people subjected to intense scrutiny by employers because their immigration status is connected to their right to work.

I see families frightened every time there is another announcement because they genuinely do not know whether another promise will be broken.

That uncertainty has consequences.

It affects mental health.

It affects children.

It affects whether people buy homes, change employment, start businesses or put down roots.

It affects whether somebody ever feels able to say: “This is my home.”

The lesson of Windrush should therefore not simply be that one particular generation was treated wrongly.

The deeper lesson must be that government policy can cause enormous harm when immigration enforcement is allowed to override fairness, humanity, evidence and the lived reality of people who belong to our communities.

Windrush also teaches us what happens when warning signs are ignored.

Years later we speak about compensation, reviews, apologies and lessons learned.

But surely the greatest way to honour the Windrush generation is not simply to apologise for the past.

It is to recognise the patterns before another generation experiences them.

History does not always repeat itself in exactly the same form.

Different policy.

Different terminology.

Different government.

Different generation.

But sometimes the underlying pattern is frighteningly familiar.

Uncertainty.

Hostility.

People being required repeatedly to prove their worth.

Promises being changed.

Belonging becoming conditional.

Communities becoming convenient scapegoats for much larger political and economic problems.

And children inheriting the trauma created by decisions they had no part in making.

We must be better than that.

Government absolutely has the right and responsibility to operate an effective immigration system. Borders, rules, compliance and enforcement are legitimate parts of immigration policy.

But an effective immigration system must also be predictable, proportionate, economically rational and fair.

People who comply with the rules should be able to trust the rules.

Employers who recruit workers under government-created immigration routes should be able to plan their workforce.

Children should not grow up wondering whether the country they call home will eventually accept them.

And migrants should not have to spend their lives repeatedly proving that they are worthy of belonging.

My position remains clear.

Drop the proposed earned-settlement approach and have a serious, evidence-based conversation about settlement, contribution and integration.

Settlement should not become an endlessly moving finishing line.

It should represent what it has always been intended to represent: the point at which a person who has lived lawfully in this country, met the requirements imposed upon them and established their life here acquires security and permanence.

That security matters.

Because settlement is not merely a document.

It is the ability to plan.

To build.

To belong.

To stop living with the fear that tomorrow the rules may change again.

I am grateful to everyone who spoke so powerfully on Monday, particularly those from the Windrush generation who continue to tell their stories despite the personal cost of doing so.

Their experiences are not simply history.

They are a warning.

If we say that we learned the lessons of Windrush, then our immigration policy must demonstrate that we learned them.

Otherwise, “lessons learned” becomes nothing more than a phrase we repeat after the damage has already been done.

History has already taught us what happens when belonging becomes conditional.

We must not allow it to happen again.

Rumbidzai Bvunzawabaya