Strangers Into Citizens

Strangers into Citizens is a campaign by the London-based Citizen Organising Foundation, better known as London Citizens. The campaign is calling for a one-off naturalisation of long-term irregular migrants in the United Kingdom. This is also known as an "earned amnesty" or "pathway into citizenship".

Since it was launched in Autumn 2006 with the backing of church leaders, trade unions and migrant support groups, the campaign has made rapid political progress, now counting the Conservative mayor of London and the Liberal-Democrat party among its principal advocates.

The Home Office calculates there to be at least 500,000 refused asylum-seekers and visa overstayers who have made new lives in the UK, and admits that most will never be expelled. But these estimates, based on 2001 figures, have been superseded by a recent study by the London School of Economics (LSE) which suggests that "the current population of irregular migrants and their children in the UK is somewhere in the range of 525,000 to 950,000 with a central estimate of 725,000". At current removal rates and costs, this means it would take 34 years and cost £8b forcibly to remove them all. Recently, a study carried out by the University of Oxford has estimated that there are 120,000 irregular migrant children in the UK, of whom 65,000 born in the UK to parents without legal immigration status.

Strangers into Citizens argues that a proportion of these should become legal by means of a two-year work permit available to asylum-seekers or economic migrants who can show they have been in the UK for four years or more. The proposals put forward by the campaign would give indefinite leave to remain at the end of a two-year period, subject to criteria such as an English language test, a clean criminal record and valid references from an employer and community sponsor for those qualifying for a work permit. Campaigners describe this as a "pathway to citizenship" of the sort advocated by President Barack Obama . In Europe, they point to the Spanish amnesty of 2005, in which 700,000 were granted legal status, as a possible model for the UK.