Earned settlement gamble risks immigration backlash from Britain’s silent majority

The reforms are the biggest shake-up to immigration policy in decades. The plan doubles the qualifying period for indefinite leave to remain to ten years, and introduces a new model requiring immigrants to ‘earn’ their settled status through evidence of ‘giving back’.

Under the proposals, immigrants will find themselves fast-tracked should they fit into ‘high-value’ categories like high-tax payers or strong civic contributors. Others stand to find their qualifying period extended by two or three times their current timelines.

Cue a ferocious debate. Are these changes moral? Fairer? Necessary to establish ‘control’? Will it make this country richer? Opinion columns stack up, polls offer headline stats on a country divided, and the narrative is framed by the loudest and increasingly extreme positions.

But polls only tell us so much. If immigration is set to be the defining topic of this government, ministers would be wise not to linger on snap surveys and clickbait headlines. Working in participatory democracy has taught me that most people’s views are conditional, context-dependent, and rarely as vitriolic as the internet would have us believe.

There's a reasonable middleground in this country who are open to compromise. They just aren't being heard. These people won’t necessarily shout about it on social media, tell politicians what they think in the comment section of online newspapers, or in government consultations. They’re not shouting the loudest. But they will make their voices heard eventually, with their vote.

As the consultation period on earned settlement closes, all the expert opinions in the world won’t solve this disconnect. To really understand where the public is at the majority must be heard.

Deeper, more meaningful engagement between politicians and the public is the only way to detoxify the debate, and deliberative democracy is the instrument that might finally do it.

It means convening respectful discussions between people from all backgrounds and perspectives, representative of the country’s population. It means giving them time, space, balanced information to discuss the trade-offs and value-judgements inherent in a topic as heated and important as immigration, and find common ground.

What is needed is a real political commitment to hear them out and act on their considered collective conclusions. And there’s a practical, tangible way to make it happen.

At Demos, we’re calling for government to commission a national deliberative process – a citizens’ assembly – on earned settlement, and to pilot place-based deliberative processes on integration and social cohesion.

This immigration debate has only grown more toxic as time has worn on, with resolution feeling further away. The time to trial concrete, meaningful public participation is now – while there’s still time to rebuild shattered public trust and build a more resilient, upgraded democracy in Britain.

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Aidan Garner is a Researcher at the cross party think tank, Demos.

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