Bearly Newsworthy: What Price Belonging?

The Government's new Immigration White Paper is less a grand strategy than 'a longer waiting room, a higher bill, and a hierarchy of worth dressed up as reform' reports The Bear

In February 2022, I became a citizen of the United Kingdom.

At that stage, things were still a bit lockdown-adjacent, so instead of going to my local town hall for the usual ceremony, I swore my oath of allegiance to a framed photo of the late Queen Elizabeth II, held up by a lovely council officer on a Zoom call. It wasn’t quite the stirring moment I might have imagined a few years earlier – no brass band, no tea and biscuits, no bunting – but I sincerely meant every word. Despite the anticlimax, it remains one of the proudest days of my life.

My own road to becoming a fully-fledged citizen was long, bureaucratically absurd, and very, very expensive. Between visa fees, healthcare surcharges, English language exams (plural), the Life in the UK test (which read like a set of Trivial Pursuit questions devised by Jacob Rees Mogg), and naturalisation itself, the cost came in at just over £10,000 (£10,063 to be exact). Add to this another £1,500 for priority service fees – because my job at the time required me to travel on short notice – and the total climbs to £11,563. That’s not including the taxes I paid throughout. That’s just for the privilege of applying to stay.

This week, the Labour Government announced plans to double the required period of residency before migrants can apply for permanent settlement, extending it from five years to ten. They’re also introducing stricter English language requirements for dependents, degrees for high skilled roles, a levy on international students fees and floating a fast-track option for “high contributors” – those deemed to add exceptional economic or societal value.

It’s being pitched as bold, structural reform. But, as soon as you strip out the rhetoric, what you’re left with is an administrative extension of an already expensive process that adds little policy value beyond ideas with no clear funding routes and a great deal of individual strain.