More non-EU citizens arrived to seek asylum (96,000) than on a work visa (86,000) from June 2024 to June 2025, the Office for National Statistics thinks. That's excluding the 'dependants' of work visa holders.

Non-EU migration continues to add hundreds of thousands a year to the population (subject to potential future emigration), outweighing negative net migration of EU and British citizens.

Nearly all of them require English language at some point in the process (whether at entry, midway or final), with refugees being the most significant exception. I don't think lack of English skills is a significant problem, given that it's a global language - different if it were Danish.

The new spin is to raise the bar for what counts as adequate media coverage: “Why isn’t this front page news everywhere?!?”

Irish citizens are just exempt. Irish residents are exempt if entering the UK from ROI, as below. The exemptions cover both NI and GB, and there is no enforcement on ROI-NI crossings anyway.

Irish citizens and residents are exempt. Otherwise people are supposed to get one before entering the UK from Ireland.

That is also my reading - hard lines if you are RQF3-5 but do earn over 50k as it’s an extra five years to ILR based purely on skill classification.

In terms of how defined, consultation question 6 says that public service occupations are “health and education occupations where going rates are based on national pay scales”. But only RQF6+ within that, as you say.

Home Office press release: www.gov.uk/government/n...

Home Secretary says in the foreword: "we propose to apply these changes to everyone in the country today who has not already received indefinite leave to remain... as soon as our immigration rules have changed".

People on family or human rights visas can apply for exceptional permission to claim benefits, and the Home Office used to make them wait longer for ILR if they did, although that policy was suspended in 2022. So there is a sort of precedent for this approach.