The Boriswave Settlement Time Bomb

There are reports that the Home Office might water down proposals to increase the qualifying period for migrants to obtain Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR), after Labour MPs and migrant groups have been campaigning for months to have the proposed changes scrapped.

For those unaware, most migrants on work visas and their dependants can qualify for ILR after five years. Once a migrant has ILR, they can reside in the UK indefinitely, they no longer have to pay visa fees or the immigration health surcharge, they can sponsor family members (dependants) to come to the UK, they can access welfare subject to the usual eligibility rules, on the same basis as a British citizen (including universal credit, child benefit, social housing, personal independence payments, pension tax credit and more), and they can apply for British citizenship 12 months later.

Due to unprecedented levels of immigration between 2021 and 2024, these migrants — often referred to as ‘the Boriswave’ — are rapidly approaching that five-year qualifying mark; in fact, some of the arrivals in the first half of 2021 will already have applied for, and been granted, ILR.

1.6 million in five years

According to official Home Office projections, some 1.3 to 2.2 million migrants are expected to obtain ILR and settle between 2026 and 2030, with the central estimate being that 1.6 million will settle. In this central estimate, the Home Office projects that if the rules around ILR eligibility aren’t changed, 286,000 migrants will obtain ILR in 2026, 345,000 in 2027, 449,000 in 2028, 312,000 in 2029 and 233,000 in 2030.

For some comparison, in the two decades from 1980 to 1999, around 1.27 million migrants were granted settlement. In the following two decades, from 2000 to 2019, that figure was around 2.7 million.

In just five years, then, the Home Office could be dishing out more settlement grants than in the entire two decades from 1980 to 1999 — and if the high-case estimate is right and 2.2 million migrants settle, nearly as many as in the two decades from 2000 to 2019.

In just five years, the Home Office could grant more settlement than in the entire two decades to 1999.

A time bomb the Government half-recognises

The Government appears to recognise this is a fiscal time bomb. In May 2025, it released a white paper that said the standard qualifying period for settlement (ILR) would be increased to 10 years, with other stricter criteria required to settle. In November 2025, the earned settlement command paper was released and pledged a raft of changes, including higher salary, language and contribution requirements for migrants to settle.

The Government initially said the changes would be implemented from April 2026. That timetable has since slipped, and no firm new implementation date has been confirmed — if they even go ahead. Every day the Home Office delays implementing these reforms, hundreds more will be qualifying.

Low-wage, low-skill — and a lifetime net cost

Much of the Boriswave are low-wage and low-skill migrants. This is perhaps best illustrated by a recent report from the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee: one of the proposed requirements in the earned settlement paper is that migrants must earn at least £12,570 a year for between three and five years (subject to consultation) in the period preceding their application, before they can qualify for ILR. This is also the threshold at which one starts paying income tax and national insurance. This simple requirement would ‘affect the largest number of people’, according to the report. Note that a study visa does not itself lead to the five-year settlement pathway; however, former students who switch into work routes are included in the Home Office projection.

If these migrants do settle in the UK, they are projected to be a lifetime net cost to the Treasury. Given we have weak economic growth, nine million economically inactive adults, the highest welfare spending on record and the highest tax burden since the Second World War, allowing over a million low-wage, low-skill migrants to settle will be a disaster — but how much will they cost?

So how much will they cost?

The Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) released a report in early 2025 on the fiscal impact of settlement, using Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) assumptions on migrant earnings, though it has since withdrawn its headline cost estimate. It is worth noting that the OBR assumes migrants arrive at age 25 and bring no dependants with them, something which we know to be categorically false, especially post-Boriswave.

Reform UK also released their own report in April 2026 and used the official Home Office projection that 1.6 million migrants would obtain ILR and settle between 2026 and 2030. For this cohort alone, Reform UK estimated the lifetime net-fiscal cost would be £622 billion, or £154 billion if discounted.

One official estimate from the Government is for care workers and their adult dependants, which placed the lifetime net-fiscal cost at £9.5 billion. Note this is only for a specific subset of workers under the health and care visa, and only their adult dependants, so it doesn’t include the whole of the Boriswave or any dependants under the age of 18 when their visa was granted.

Neither the Home Office nor the Treasury have released official estimates for the lifetime net-fiscal cost if the entire Boriswave (1.3 to 2.2 million migrants) obtain ILR and settle in the UK between 2026 and 2030.

Don’t water it down

For a Labour Government to be considering changing ILR rules and preventing upwards of a million migrants from settling, I think we can safely assume the internal projections must be dire.

This is why it’s vital the Government don’t water down these reforms and implement these changes as soon as possible. The Boriswave is a fiscal catastrophe that was never asked for. The 2019 Conservative manifesto said ‘there will be fewer lower-skilled migrants and overall numbers will come down’ — what followed was the largest wave of immigration into Britain ever recorded.

For all the talk about fairness towards migrants, their wants and needs must never come before the wishes of the British public. Allowing the Boriswave to settle would be a disaster, and it must be prevented.