The leader of the United Kingdom Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, has explained why she wants migrants to wait 10 years before becoming British citizens.
She said the current immigration rules are unfair to hardworking British citizens and need to be tougher.
Writing in the Daily Mail, Badenoch said the UK must tighten both legal and illegal immigration. “We need to crack down on it in every form, both legal and illegal,” she wrote.
According to her, the current system rewards people who “jump the queue, break the rules, and enter illegally” while ignoring citizens who work hard and obey the law.
“Britain today seems to work more favourably for those who get into our country illegally but then denigrate our customs and our culture,” she said.
Badenoch pointed out that many asylum seekers are being housed in hotels at the government’s expense, costing taxpayers billions of pounds. She also criticised a lesser-known policy that allows low-paid immigrants and refugees to apply for *indefinite leave to remain* after five years.
“This allows them to claim the same benefits British citizens are entitled to, such as social housing and Universal Credit,” she explained. “They become automatically entitled to make such claims regardless of whether they’ve paid taxes or have simply lived off the state.”
She called the policy unfair. “That is fundamentally unfair to all the hard-working Brits who have dutifully paid into the system – and I’m determined to stop it,” she added.
Badenoch also criticised the Labour Government for blocking the Conservative Party’s immigration reform bill. The proposed *Deportation Bill* would have doubled the time migrants must wait before claiming benefits — from five to ten years — and delayed the path to citizenship for the same period.
“It would have introduced a strict cap on the number of newcomers, and the same ten-year rule would apply to people seeking the privilege of British citizenship,” she stated.
The bill also planned to bar anyone who had claimed benefits from receiving indefinite leave to remain. In addition, it would have allowed the government to take away settled status from immigrants who commit crimes.
Badenoch said the bill was meant to “protect our borders and uphold fairness in our benefits system,” but blamed Labour for voting it down.
She admitted that some of these plans might have faced legal challenges, just like the past government’s failed attempt to deport illegal immigrants to Rwanda.
“To be honest, many – if not all – of the measures it contained would probably have ended up going the same way,” she said. “That became bogged down in our courts and frustrated by unnamed foreign judges interpreting the European Convention on Human Rights.”
Badenoch concluded that the immigration system must work for those who follow the rules and support the country, not for those who take advantage of it.
