Waiting a decade in limbo for permanent UK residency is a prison sentence

22 May 2025, 10:45 | Updated: 22 May 2025, 16:52

Waiting a decade in limbo for permanent UK residency is not immigration policy - It is a prison sentence. Picture: LBC

I have been living and working in the UK for more than a decade.

I feel betrayed by Labour’s proposed immigration policies - and a duty to speak up for those who can’t.

Last week, the Government published its Immigration White Paper. One of its discriminatory new proposals is to double the amount of time tens of thousands of people need to wait before they can apply for permanent residency from 5 years to 10 years. I have already been through the 10 year route to settlement and I can tell you that 10 years of limbo is not immigration policy. It is a prison sentence.

Coming here was not my choice. I arrived in the UK as a survivor of trafficking at 14 years old. Scared and alone, I taught myself English by watching cartoons on YouTube. Slowly, I started to build a life here. But the system I was placed in did everything it could to deny me the chance to flourish.

The 10-year route is a path to Indefinite Leave to Remain, or permanent residency, which allows a person to live and work in the country without time restrictions. The reality of those 10 years is an unbearable treadmill of uncertainty, debt, trauma, and lost time. You have to make four applications to the Home Office over a decade of waiting, each time not knowing if your application for another two and half years of leave will be approved. The financial burden is immense – for one adult, it can cost a total of £25,000 in visa fees and immigration health surcharge. And that doesn’t include legal costs or the personal toll of all the stress and anxiety.

I started my 10 year journey aged 21. I could have gone to university. I could have saved money. I could have been able to afford taking my daughter to the zoo. Instead, I’ve spent my twenties just trying to survive, juggling full-time work with the crushing stress of reapplying, paying thousands, and wondering — every time — if this will be the moment the Home Office says no.

Even with a good job and solid support, that fear never goes away.

I’ve worked hard doing jobs others don’t want to, paying my taxes and giving back to my community. Many others on the 10-year route want to do the same. Today, I’m a youth organiser at Praxis, working with young people who are going through the system I went through. What I see every day — in my life and in theirs — is how cruel and self-defeating the UK’s 10-year Limited Leave to Remain pathway is.

For many people on the 10-year route, especially young people, their prime years are spent in limbo. You can’t plan your life. You can’t travel. You don’t know if you’ll be able to stay. That’s not just a personal tragedy; it’s a political failure. Not only does it embed inequality and divide us, but it denies this country the contribution of people who are already a part of it.

During my 10-year ordeal, I went to court twice because the Home Office didn’t believe I had a strong enough connection to this country — even though I’ve been here since I was 14 years old. I was told that not working while recovering from trafficking somehow made me less worthy of leave. That kind of logic is both heartless and senseless.

Worse still, many women in my position feel they have no option but to stay in toxic or abusive relationships for fear that ending them will jeopardise their immigration status. How can any government claim to champion women’s rights while forcing people into that kind of impossible choice?

I never stopped reliving my trauma — not just the trafficking, but what came after. The paperwork. The financial pressure. The instability. When I was pregnant, my greatest fear was the thought that my child would have to go through the same unforgiving system that I had to go through. Only after my daughter was born in 2022 did I feel a sense of healing. I knew she wouldn’t have to go through what I did because of her British passport.

I finally got permanent residency 8 months ago, and I am still getting used to this new life. Last week I took my daughter to Brighton for the first time. She loved the sea. She had an ice cream. I didn’t have to say no. That small joy felt like freedom.

The system expects us to integrate while denying us the very tools we need to do so. It demands self-reliance, but punishes ambition. I’ve seen friends and fellow survivors who were once nervous to speak English in public become nurses, students and teachers. That’s what happens when people are given security and opportunity. That’s what the UK loses when it refuses to see migrants as people with futures here.

Keir Starmer won’t be cleaning pub kitchens or caring for our elderly. It is not his life that will be held ransom by these policies. If the Labour Party cares about justice and fairness, it would scrap the 10 year route to settlement altogether.

I made it to the other side eventually. But I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

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Nishta Mauree is a youth organiser and welfare support worker at Praxis in East London.

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