Integration 1. A simplified, universal pathway to settlement after five years 2. Reintroduce birthright citizenship and reduce integration barriers for children 3. Embrace a positive narrative about immigration, diversi­ty and belonging Up and down the country our communities feel divided and tense. Race relations are at their lowest and weakest point in decades in the wake of racist riots in the Summer of 2024 that spread into a wave of anti-asylum-seeker pro ­tests in the Summer of 2025. The normalisation of far-right narratives, conspiracy theories and fear of migrants, par­ticularly men of Muslim faith, was shockingly evident at the so-called“Unite the Kingdom” rally on 13th September 2025, organised by Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, alias‘Tommy Robinson’, and openly backed by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk. This street mobilisation sits alongside the entry of Nigel Farage and other Reform politicians into the House of Commons and their current commanding posi­tion in opinion polling. Not only has the Conservative party been completely overtaken by the same nativist, hard-right agenda, but even the Labour Party has spent much of its first year in power echoing these narratives and promoting hostile policies. There is an urgent need to address and to counter the rise of a racist and hate-filled discourse, and to understand how systemic failings in our immigration sys­tem have contributed to a lack of community cohesion. The immigration system we currently operate is a major obstacle to successful integration for all immigrants and refugees, based as it is in the case of the asylum system on the logic of deterrence, and in the rest of the immigration system increasingly on a‘guest worker’ system of tempo­rary and restrictive grants of leave to remain. This means that, whether refugees, workers, or families, immigrants who are going to settle in the UK for the long term must often first undergo many years of being an outsider, navi­gating a system that causes stress and economic hardship and which is designed primarily for hostility. Pathways to citizenship and a stable status in the UK have been pushed further out of reach from migrant communities, 52 while rac­ist narratives about whether people belonging to ethnic mi­norities can ever“truly” be English have entered the main­stream discourse. 53 Citizenship ought to be celebrated and promoted by the government as the ultimate symbol of integration of mi­grant communities. There is strong public support for the notion that long-term immigrants to the UK should natu­ralise as citizens and embrace the rights and responsibili­ties of full and equal membership of the nation. 54 Instead, this government has followed in the footsteps of previous ones in taking steps to make citizenship, or even perma­nent settlement, less accessible, forcing more people to live for the long term with a precarious, temporary status in our communities. This is intended to enable the government to point at an overall net reduction in the number of immi­grants living here, but it does no such thing, it simply means the people who are building their homes here are forced to do so on shakier ground. When Theresa May was Home Secretary from 2010-2016, the then government pledged to reduce net immigration to under 100,000. The immigration system was thus rede ­signed to reduce the rights of immigrants, not only in the workplace as discussed above, but in terms of settlement and access to services, in order to encourage them to leave, thereby reducing overall numbers. This is the infamous “hostile environment” policy, which resulted in the Win­drush Scandal. 55 Despite the scandal, and clear evidence that the hostile policies exacerbated racial discrimination, let alone their failure to reduce immigrant numbers in any case, none of the hostile environment policies have been repealed to this day. 56 This government has failed to learn the lesson from this failed experiment, and is instead apparently keen to repeat it beat for beat. In her white paper on immigration, the then Home Secretary Yvette Cooper promised to extend the time before most immigrants would be eligible to apply 52  https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/restoring-control-over-the-immigration-system-white-paper 53  https://www.suellabraverman.co.uk/news/i-will-never-be-truly-english-here-why 54  https://www.britishfuture.org/fewer-than-1-in-10-people-support-badenochs-proposed-15-year-wait-on-citizenship-poll/ 55  https://jcwi.org.uk/reportsbriefings/windrush-scandal-explained/ 56  Crisis(2019)‘The High Court made the right call with‘Right to Rent’: Now it’s time for government to act’, website last accessed: 8 August 2024. https://www.crisis.org. uk/about-us/the-crisis-blog/the-high-court-made-the-right-call-with-right-to-rent-now-it-s-time-for-the-government-to-act/ Time for change 13