Migrants will be forced to prove they are good citizens to remain permanently in Britain as part of tough tests introduced by the UK's new home secretary aimed at clamping down on migration.
In a move to the right to combat the growing popularity of the hardline Reform party, Shabana Mahmood called for foreigners intent on staying in Britain for the long-term to speak English to a high standard, do volunteer community work and have no criminal record.
In an address to the Labour Party conference in Liverpool she called for a raft of new tests if migrants want to qualify for the indefinite leave to remain status.
Migration wars
Labour is hoping that its new migration approach will create a clear divide with Reform, which has stated it will abolish the indefinite leave to remain policy.
While migrants can currently apply for the right to live and work in Britain forever after five years, Labour is planning to double this to 10 years.
Figures from the University of Oxford's Migration Observatory migration project estimate that there are more than four million people who have the status. Reform has promised to replace it with visas they have to apply for every five years.
Daughter of shopkeepers
Seen as a rising star in Labour, the former lawyer is willing to take a tough stance on issues that the left-wing of the party feel uneasy about. Ms Mahmood was quick to highlight in her speech at the Liverpool party conference her early years as a child of Pakistani immigrants in Birmingham.
“I am a rare home secretary, perhaps the only one whose first job was behind the till in my parents’ cornershop,” she said.
“I know there’s nothing 'low-level' about shoplifting. I know what it feels like to keep a cricket bat behind the counter, just in case.”
She argued that when society gets tough on crime “we bring communities together” as safety was a “precondition of the open, tolerant, generous country that we want to be”.
Ethno-nationalism
Ms Mahmood has also not been afraid to refer to her roots and her patriotism, telling Parliament earlier this month that “you can be English and look like me”.
She told the packed conference hall that she loved Britain as “an open, tolerant and generous place” but then warned that the far-right was hijacking patriotism to its own end, especially through the use of Union and St George’s flags seen at a recent mass protest in London.
Patriotism, she warned was turning into “ethno-nationalism”, which struggles to accept that “someone who looks like me, and has a faith like mine, can truly be English or British”.
The greatest worry, she said, was that many in the crowds on the London march were being unduly influenced and taken on a “a path from patriotism towards ethno-nationalism”.
Lost control
With the populist Nigel Farage’s Reform party soaring in the polls, Labour are increasingly anxious that they have to win the immigration debate to get back lost voters.
Ms Mahmood, the first female Muslim home secretary, argued that people felt the UK had “lost control” with small boat crossings currently totalling more than 50,000 a year, bringing in illegal workers, some with criminal records.
She vowed to “do whatever it takes to secure our borders” then hinted at strong action over them stating that “you will not always like what I do, but until there is control of borders we won’t be the tolerant country we believe in”.
“If we do not rise to this challenge our vision of an open, tolerant, generous country will wither,” she added. “Working class communities will turn away from us.”
She wanted to fight for a “a greater Britain, not a littler England” and concluded the speech stating that “let it never be forgotten that I will be a tough Labour home secretary”.
