The ridiculous extension of the wait for settled status isn't about putting up barriers to arrival, it's about putting up barriers to integration for people who have already been here for years. It's agreeing with Farage that these people should be treated with suspicion - and leaving it at that.

Yes, but that’s the point; they want people, especially the careworkers and ‘low skilled’ they seem to detest so much, to leave.

ICE Fails Again to Publish Required Detention Data For the second time this year, the agency has failed to publish the required information about immigration enforcement on schedule this week. Transparency isn't what you say, it's what you do. austinkocher.substack.com/p/ice-fails-...

Claims of 40 dead after an Israeli airstrike on a elementary girl’s school in Iran www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblo...

At this point, it’s a conscious choice to ignore the harm their policies are doing, both to migrant communities and to their electoral prospects - suggesting it’s an ideological commitment, at least for Mahmood. Also disingenuous to conflate the planned change to settlement with ‘illegal migration’

Remember that the whole ‘net fiscal burden’ train was started rolling by this guy and his pals

Yes, because this whole thing looks to have been driven by the twitter-racist manufactured psychosis over "lifetime net fiscal contribution", something that literally nobody who's not on twitter cares about

If Reform had won, Labour's statement would be that this result is a stark reminder we need to listen and learn from voters who rightly feel betrayed by modern politics. But the Greens won by a comfortable margin, so it's: these voters are stupid and also sinister and, ugh, Muslims

Assuming this is *something*, I will be writing it up here on Monday: open.substack.com/pub/thoughts...

Labour remain trapped by the grid. It's clear that they had planned on the basis of either losing to Reform or just about scrapping a tight win against them. So they had Mahmood already lined up to show that Labour can outdo Reform on the cruelty stakes. Unfortunately the Greens won.

And on Monday's order paper is a written statement on "asylum changes". Next week would also be when the Spring statement of changes to the immigration rules are often laid.

Our @refugeecouncil.bsky.social analysis in November estimated the extra reviews would cost at least £1.1bn over the first decade www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/press-office... That doesn't measure the extra barriers to integration caused leaving refugees with precarious leave for two decades.

A party that is resolutely anti-bourgeois while being staffed and supported by the bourgeoisie is an intriguing and inevitably impossible strategy. Anyway good luck attracting those Reform voters who hate you.

Landmark win protects refugees from street homelessness. Our clients, two newly granted refugees, challenged the Home Office’s approach to the 28-day move-on period after asylum support. The case exposed risks of street homelessness and failures around extending support. dpglaw.co.uk/landmark-win...

Breaking: *Asif Aziz's mass evictions of Londoners appear to be BACK ON *Sadiq Khan personally demands immediate response from the landlord *Leading homelessness charity cuts ties with the Aziz family and refuses donation *Questions over legality of paperwork www.londoncentric.media/p/asif-aziz-...

The first woman in Parliament to appear in the Guardian's 'best-dressed at Glastonbury' feature. You'll never sing that, etc...

NEWS: Yesterday, Nelson Shardey was granted British citizenship following a ceremony at Wallasey Town Hall. A local legend, Nelson has been in the UK for 49 years, since 1977. He hit headlines in 2024 when, represented by GMIAU, he legally challenged the Home Office.

Without Mahmood getting the sack I don't see how Labour make a credible change on immigration and asylum. Labour can't just say some new words.

You don’t need to do a podcast.

Hannah Spencer walking into Westminster, sucking her teeth, tutting, and muttering "tell you what, you've had some cowboys in here."

PM: You get those migration numbers down? Home Sec: Sure did boss, real fuckin damaging to public services and increasing the one voters hate most, just like you asked PM: what

A bad night for authoritarian parties committed to anti-immigrant policies. Anyway enough about UK Labour.

This was obvious to anyone looking at this. They created a policy that attacks people's very status to be able to live in a country and settle. No amount of saying "rules change" will help. Alot of Labour MPs get this and are rightly livid. This should be a big wake up call for the rest.

Labour's swing toward racism is perhaps the biggest unforced error in British political history; burnt their base to ashes and won them not a single vote on the right.

great replacement except they want to import racists

You got to feel for Matt Goodwin. Sorry missed a word. You got to feel contempt for Matt Goodwin.

Labour getting exactly what they deserved

Sky News hearing Labour canvassers found that doubling (and tripling) the route to settlement has caused significant concern with those directly affected (Commonwealth migrants who have arrived in last 3 years) Sheer scale of changes not yet on the general media radar, though MPs hearing a lot

If Labour does come third in Gorton and Denton, the electoral strategy of Blue Labour can finally be thrown on the scrap heap.

Matt Goodwin quoted on Sky News as saying that Reform didn't lose to genuine voting, but that a coalition of Islamists and woke progressives did as we were 'told'. Is he trying to beat a world record for largest number of dog whistles or something.

A Green win must mean that "left behind" voters forgotten by Westminster want open borders and legalised class A drugs. That's how it works right?

Green majority of more than 4500, Labour in third place. Absolute calamity for Keir Starmer. And a complete failure of McSweeney’s electoral philosophy. The idea of relying on an anti-Reform vote coalescing behind Labour just collapsed entirely.

On 11th March, we’re turning up to Parliament in the Mass Lobby for Migrant Rights. Along with migrant and refugee groups, unions, and faith groups we’re going to call on as many MPs as possible to oppose the Government’s earned settlement plans. Learn more: www.praxis.org.uk/mass-lobby-a...

In 2025 the Government shut down the Afghan route, "paused" refugee family reunion and have let the UK Resettlement Scheme - which should be the flagship resettlement scheme - dwindle to next to nothing.

Very helpful from Sonia unpacking the new Home Office asylum decision quality data included in today's stats.

Couldn't help myself: open.substack.com/pub/thoughts...

These figures illustrate a point @jtmigratory.bsky.social made recently: millions of EU citizens have been granted settlement "without the slightest murmur of political or public disapproval", whereas settlement for the mostly non-EU citizens who've arrived post-Brexit is a major issue.

Some headline thoughts on asylum stats out today: Government has made good progress on asylum backlog. Numbers have fallen from around 62,000 cases in September to around 49,000 cases at the end of December 2025. This is now well below half the peak in summer 2023.

The number of people arriving on safe and legal routes hasn't fallen dramatically. Only 65 refugees were resettled through the UK resettlement scheme between Oct and Dec. It's supposed the be the UK's global resettlement scheme. When launched in 2019, it aimed to resettle around 5k people a year.

It does appear that this "transition to a new caseworking system" has resulted in the (permanent?) loss of much previously published data (see also e.g. stats on sexual orientation asylum claims)

New Home Office stats show a big increase in the processing of asylum claims - which should be good news, but will add big strain to an already stretched tribunals system which will have to deal with an additional tens of thousands of appeals.

The HO summary says that the year on year grant rate for Syrian claims has dropped from 98% to 9% www.gov.uk/government/s...

Asylum grant rate down to 42% in 2025. Given what we know about HO decision making (bad), lots of meritorious cases are being pushed into the tribunal system (probably without a lawyer given the legal aid crisis)

Two women arrested in Uganda for allegedly kissing in public could face life sentence

A record 129 journalists and media workers were killed in the course of their work in 2025, two-thirds of them by Israeli forces, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists www.theguardian.com/media/2026/f...

"Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a nearly blind refugee from Burma who Border Patrol agents dropped off at a doughnut shop Thursday and left to find his way home, 5 miles away, has been found dead." To read the words is to damn all involved, from Trump on down.

The High Court has granted the defendant in the Ammori / Palestine Action case permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal: www.judiciary.uk/judgments/hu...

When the police found out how racially biased their retrospective facial recognition tool was, they actively lobbied to keep using it at those settings. We don't know how many other people have been in Alvi's situation and got arrested for something they didn't do because of it. This can't go on.

🚨 DONATE TO HELP US STOP THE GOVERNMENT TEARING FAMILIES APART Last year, Refugee Family Reunion - the main safe route for children to reunite with family - was suspended. We’re taking legal action to challenge it. Chip in now: www.crowdjustice.com/case/stop-su...

Good. It's inhumane