By MediVisas on April 17, 2015 in Uncategorized
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We have written a brief guide to the immigration policies of the main parties, as outlines in their manifestos.
Please read and use your vote wisely!
Conservative Party
EEA Migration:
- Commit to aim of having net migration in the ‘tens of thousands’
- EU nationals to be eligible for tax credits and child benefit only after four years of making contributions
- In-Out referendum on membership of the EU
- Bar EU nationals from social housing until they have lived in the UK for four years
- Barring EU nationals from claiming job-seeking benefits
- Removing EU nationals from the UK if they are unemployed for a period of 6 months
- Rules making it easier to deport EU nationals who commit crimes
- Strengthening re-entry bans for EU nationals who ‘abuse’ free movement
- Introduce income threshold and English language test for EU national spouses
Non-EEA migration:
- Maintaining cap of skilled migrants to 20,700
- Introducing sanctions for sponsor colleges or businesses when migrants fail to comply with the terms of their visas
- Remove all non-asylum applicants after refusal and make them appeal from abroad
- Introduce satellite tracking for foreign national criminals awaiting deportation
- Make all landlords check the immigration status of tenants
Labour Party
- Prevent EU migrants from claiming benefits until they have been resident for two years
- Charges for non-visa nationals coming to the UK
- ‘Stronger controls’ to prevent those who have committed serious crimes from coming to the UK
- Keeping the cap on workers coming to the UK
- A law on preventing employers from undercutting wages and exploiting workers
- An end to indefinite detention and the detention of pregnant women and victims of sexual abuse or trafficking
Liberal Democrats
- Remain in the EU
- Continue to allow high-skill immigration
- Re-instate Post-study work visa for Science, Technology Engineering and Maths graduates
- End indefinite detention
- Require working age asylum seekers to work once they have been waiting more than six months for their claim to be processed
- Ensure applications are processed quickly
- Deport people with no right to stay
- Reduce the time genuine refugees have to wait before they can settle into life in the UK
- Take tough actions against educational institutions that allow abuse of the student route into the UK
- Present to Parliament an annual assessment of skill and labour market shortfalls
Green Party
- Reject open borders approach
- Reject an arbitrary numerical cap on net migration
- Respecting the legal obligations within the EU on freedom of movement
- Abolition of the £18,600 maintenance threshold for spousal visas
- Make it easier for UK nationals to sponsor adult dependents, especially elderly parents
- Allow foreign students to work for two years after graduation
- Widen the Youth Mobility scheme to allow those from poorer countries to participate
- Review the rules for those wishing to do business here to ensure they are not discriminatory against smaller businesses
- Not simply accept people just because they are rich
- Immediately stop the detention of women and children
- Reintroduce legal aid for reasonable levels of immigration and asylum workMake English or Welsh language lessons available to all new immigrants, either free or affordable
- Open up ways for existing irregular migrants who have been here for three years to become legal
businesses
UKIP
- Take back control of borders
- Leave the EU
- Increase the numbers of ‘Border Agency’ staff
- Better identification of overstayers
- Put a five-year moratorium on immigration for unskilled workers
- Introduce an Australian-style points based system
- Limit highly skilled work visas to 50,000, including those from within the EU
- Require skilled workers to have medical insurance for a five year period
- Scrap ILR and allow citizenship for skilled workers who have worked and paid tax here for five years
- Reform of visit visas to allow for reciprocal arrangements
- Require undergraduate and post-graduate students to have private health insurance
- Abolish EEA family permits
- Re-introduce the Primary Purpose rule
- Review the ‘family union system’
- Refuse NHS treatment (other than emergency access) for five years to all migrants
- Tackle the problem of sham marriages
- Foreign criminals barred from getting visas
- All resident migrants who receive custodial sentences will be held in detention and then deported