By Kio Amachree
Kemi Badenoch has seized the leadership baton of the Conservative Party and made one thing abundantly clear: she is prepared to strip rights from immigrants who are already living and working legally in the UK.
Her plan isn’t reform—it’s retribution.
What she is proposing
• Doubling the wait time before qualifying for Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) from 5 years to 10 years. 
• Barring anyone who has ever claimed benefits or lived in social housing from becoming settled at all.
• For citizens: moving from ILR to full British citizenship would take a total of 15 years under her vision.
• Declaring that the UK should stop “relying on immigration” to deal with demographic challenges—and instead have more babies.
• Hinting that US-style travel bans or withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) might be “viable” under her direction.
Why I call her a sell-out
• She once benefitted from an open society—now she’s closing the ladder behind others who want to climb.
• The communities most impacted? Africans, Asians, people of colour. When you push “no-benefits”, “no social housing”, “net contributor only”, you disproportionately hit those groups.
• This isn’t about solving integration, or creating opportunities—it’s about proving toughness for votes, especially to the right-wing fringe.
• She claims to champion British values—but instead she’s undermining fairness and trusting people to build their lives.
• Leaders should invite people in, not erect walls once they’re through the gate.
The stakes
• Whole families already settled could face further hurdles, even though they believed they were building permanent lives.
• If citizenship becomes so delayed (15 years+), immigrants may feel perpetually “outsiders” even when contributors.
• The social and economic cost? A workforce destabilised, long-term residents feeling disenfranchised, and the moral cost of a country transforming into “just another silo”.
• Politically: this risks alienating key communities that the Tories previously sought to engage—and handing ground to parties who will charge even harder.
My final word
She is not merely playing politics. Badenoch is making a conscious decision: to reward exclusion.
By dismantling access for those who are legally in the UK, she abandons integrity for power. She may believe she’s “speaking truth” but the truth she’s embracing is one of division.
And us? We stand with those whose lives are being used as pawns. We call out the sell-out who turned her back on the promise she once stood for.
