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What are routes to regularisation?

Pathways to secure immigration status for undocumented people.

What is the ask?

Everyone living in the UK must have rights, safety and dignity. We need straightforward and affordable measures to protect people from becoming undocumented and make it possible for undocumented migrants to rebuild their lives here. To achieve this, the Government must:

1. Introduce a new, simplified and affordable route to regularisation based on five years’ residence
2. Change the law so that all children born in the UK are automatically British citizens
3. Make visa renewals automatic and affordable, to facilitate settlement and integration
4. Repeal the offence of illegal working and create a route to status through work
5. Make the immigration system responsive to real life circumstances.

Background 

When people enter the UK, they build communities, relationships and put down roots. Yet our immigration system fails to recognise this. Instead, it creates insecurity and traps people in limbo. Many migrants are considered ‘temporary’ for a decade and must pay huge sums to reapply for the right to stay every 2.5 years. These unnecessarily complex rules make people undocumented for a range of reasons outside their control, including domestic abuse, inability to pay extortionate fees, poor legal advice, or a simple mistake.  

Once a person becomes undocumented, Hostile Environment policies exclude them from state support and deny them the right to work or rent a property. They push people into exploitation and harm, at work and at home, making them unable to speak up about abuse for fear of being reported to immigration enforcement.  

The system makes it almost impossible to change course. The routes back to status that do exist are extremely complex and lengthy, far more so than in countries comparable to the UK. Adults must demonstrate that they have lived in the UK for an enormous 20 years before they can regularise, and a regularisation application costs over 10 times what it would in countries like France, Spain, Portugal and Germany. Even when people do manage to regularise their status, they too often lose it again because the route to permanent settlement is so long and expensive. People must repeatedly renew their visa during a 10-year period, at great cost each time.  

How would it work? 

Countries like Spain, France, Switzerland and Portugal offer migrants who work and put down roots in their communities simpler and more affordable routes to regularisation. As a result, they can live safely in their homes and earn a decent living, and far fewer people are made undocumented. We must do the same.  A five-year route to regularisation for undocumented people would mean that people who have established lives here can resolve their status and live freely as part of their communities.  

No one should lose their right to stay in the UK because they can’t afford visa application fees, or do not know how to apply for a fee waiver. The Government should ensure that immigration fees are set no higher than the cost to the Home Office of processing an application. Moreover, once someone has successfully regularised their status, visa renewals should be automatic, and everyone should be allowed to apply for permanent settlement after five years’ formal residence.  

Finally, restoring birthright citizenship would prevent the injustice of young British people living under the threat of deportation because they have not been able to apply for the citizenship they are entitled to. 

Find out more

For more detail on this proposal read our report We Are Here: Routes to Regularisation for the UK’s Undocumented Population, learn more about who the UK's undocumented population are, check out our briefing on migrant workers’ rights or contact [email protected].