a letter to all party leaders from Freedom at 10

Dear party leaders,
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We are Freedom at 10, a group of 37 migrants who are reaching out, as you prepare your manifestos for the upcoming July 2024 general election. We are all on the 10-year route to settlement, like 170,000 other people, and are hopeful that you will consider our suggestions to reduce the 10-year family route to settlement under the current UK immigration system and protect our children’s interests. 

The majority of us have lived in the UK for over 15 years and some for as long as 24 years. We have worked, contributed to the economy, performed our civic duties in our communities, yet we and our children remain marginalised and discriminated against in comparison to other routes to settlement. 

We are our children’s primary carers, and we remain helpless and look on as our children suffer emotionally as they are unable to access their rights or live the quality of life they deserve.  This is despite being born in the UK, living all their lives here and having British passports. When you are an immigrant on the 10-year route, your children still live systematically in abject poverty.  

As parents on the 10-year route to settlement, we are not only contributing to the UK economy through our national insurance and taxes but also to the NHS as a whole. Additionally, we pay again for the NHS surcharge every 2.5 years when we renew our visa. We pay over £13,000 per person in the course of a 10-year period before we can get indefinite leave to remain. 

The huge financial burden and psychological pressure this places on families is catastrophic. It deprives parents of their ability to care properly for their children, massively harming their future prospects. In fact, the 10 years route is institutional child abuse as it deprives our children of financial and also emotional support.  
Adversely, this route serves as a catalyst that further exposes our children to the risk of child grooming or exploitation in the UK. Children are groomed for something as small as a box of chicken and chips. Whilst you may not care about us, we hope you do care about our children, who are the future of the UK; and who are suffering every day due to being stuck within the 10-year route. 

It does not have to be this way.  

​So, we are recommending that, the next government scrap the 10-year route and reduce it to 5 years. This has been done with other routes, such as Calais leave, which was initially introduced as a 10-year route in 2016 but this year was halved to 5 years. Children rely primarily on their parents, but if a child is British and their parents are not, then the child still suffers the same fate as their parents for the 10 years it takes for them to become settled. Children should not be made to suffer and reducing the 10-year route to 5 years would positively impact their lives by greatly reducing the family's psychological and financial pressure.