The Telegraph reported on September 22 that Nigel Farage’s Reform Party would expel hundreds of thousands of migrants if it gained power.
Reform says it would scrap Indefinite Leave to Remain retrospectively, raise the Skilled Worker salary bar to £60,000 a year, require higher English, restrict access to most benefits and free NHS care for migrants, and run mass deportations.
Here is what that would mean in practice.
▪ NHS and care
International staff keep hospitals and care homes open. Remove people who already work here, or close the door on replacements, and NHS waiting lists grow, costs rise, and safety suffers.
▪ Business
Logistics, food and hospitality rely on experienced migrant workers who already live here. Push them out, or block their replacements, and output falls and prices rise.
▪ Ageing Britain
Britain has a low birth rate and a rapidly ageing population. We need more working age people in vital jobs, which is why migrants are part of the solution.
▪ English rules
English is already required for work and for settlement. Raising the bar to a near native exam standard would exclude many valued staff who already speak good English.
▪ Salary rules
The general Skilled Worker threshold already rose to £38,700 this year. Raising it to £60,000 would mean no more nurses from abroad, because typical NHS nurse pay is £30,000 to £45,000, and it would also lock out most of social care and many regional roles in science and engineering.
▪ Benefits and work
Most long-term migrants are of working age and in work. Many visas already come with the condition No Recourse to Public Funds, and the majority of Universal Credit claimants are British or Irish.
▪ Legal reality
EU citizens with settled status hold a form of Indefinite Leave to Remain protected by the UK EU Withdrawal Agreement. For others, UK law only allows revocation of ILR on narrow grounds such as deception or serious offending.
A blanket reversal would face years of court challenge and delay.
▪ Deportations at scale
The UK enforces removals in the low thousands a year. Scaling to hundreds of thousands would cost £ billions, split families for years, and leave people in legal limbo while shortages worsen.
▪ Society
Neighbours who have lived here for years would be told they no longer belong. Many of their children are British citizens, and British children cannot be deported.
Families would be torn apart, trust in institutions would fall, and politics would turn nastier and more xenophobic.
BOTTOM LINE
These are extreme, draconian proposals, not deliverable plans.
They would not fix Britain’s problems. They would make Britain and Britons poorer.
