Progressive Politics

Edit: Also covered by the Guardian here

After recently announcing they'd like to take the gold and jewellery of incoming immigrants, Nazi style, last week, the UK government has now revealed it's latest plan to make immigrant lives worse, possibly fatally.

The government now plans to restrict access to benefits (unemployment or health-based financial help) immigrants without Settled Status.

Settled Status, previously available for anyone who has been in the country for more than 5 years, will now also be raised to up to 20 years for legal entry and 30 years for illegal entry.

This double-whammy of changes will likely result in huge amounts of unnecessary suffering, homelessness and possibly death.

If that wasn't enough, homelessness is a lot more expensive than paying out benefits, so this is likely to further add to the financial burden of the country.

Who is to say whether the government will stop there? How long until they start revoking settled statuses and kicking out people who have lived here for decades (like myself)?

On top of this, all of these actions embolden the far-right. People are regularly having to stop them from trying to harass refugees currently being kept in hotels.