I think you are worrying too much and a lot of this is media hype. Their main focus is small boats and people entering the country illegally. If they do restrict them more you are almost certainly better off getting your partner a visa before (but I think you would need to marry to get a spouse visa though).
> Reform would get in and throw out all the "undesirables" (basically anyone without a British Passport at first, sure they won't stop there)
I think that is an exaggerated view from a distance. I see no evidence they can do that, or want to. At the time of the Brexit campaign Farage said he wanted skilled immigrants (he gave the example of Indian doctors immigrating in the 1970s as the wort of thing he wanted). Nor can the country afford to lose skilled people. Its worth remembering that Reform would not agree to what Elon Musk wanted in return for funding so I think its safe to assume Reform would not be as extreme as the current US government.
I am of foreign birth, as is my younger daughter (she was born abroad) and I am not particularly worried. I would worry if Rupert Lowe's Restore party started making gains, or Ben Habib's Advance party.
> I'm really not sure how likely them attaining power
They are doing well in the polls now but my feeling is they are peaking. Letting on too many Conservative defectors makes them look at lot less of an anti-establishment party (a huge part of their appeal) and they are becoming too extreme (I think in reaction to the splash, mostly on social media) made by Advance and Restore (one of those is what Elon Musk endorses, so that gives you an idea where they are).
The government can very easily change your status from "legal" to "illegal" by flipping a bit. And the newspapers, who are driving this, don't care about skills, they care about the raw numbers. The members of the public driving this don't even care about immigration status, but skin colour.
They can change people's status, but I am saying they will not. It is not Reform party policy (as Rupert Lowe keeps pointing out!) and it would be disastrous to do it.
The net immigration numbers are falling!
I disagree about the public. Its very clear that the opposition to immigration is almost entirely about small boats and illegal entry.
As for skin colour, of the tiny number or racists I have heard of in real life, one comment repeated back to me made it clear the person involved preferred at least some Asians (those with skills etc.) to Eastern Europeans.
> Its very clear that the opposition to immigration is almost entirely about small boats and illegal entry.
No, that's just the current talking point.
A decade ago, small boats not in the news, somehow managed to still be a big talking point on Brexit campaign. Worse, part of the Brexit campaign was scare-mongering that the EU had made it so the UK had no control over its borders, no control over its immigration laws, and even had one poster further scare-mongering that the UK would be forced to allow in the entire population of Turkey* even though Turkey wasn't actually in the EU nor did anyone think it would get in any time soon and the UK had a veto on expansion anyway (plus the more fundamental pretentiousness in thinking they'd want to come en-masse anyway, given that Turkish people are like everyone else, in that almost none of them really care for the idea of moving to the UK).
Even for "unlawful entry" of asylum seekers who were still allowed to lawfully claim asylum, the UK was part of the Dublin III system, which oh-so-conveniently meant the UK could argue that all the other countries most people would need to go through to get to the UK should have taken them first, to which I'd like to say this:
J'ai obtenu la note D au GCSE de français, et pourtant j'ai étudié la langue à l'école. À votre avis, comment un demandeur d'asile lambda originaire de l'ancien Empire britannique va-t-il s'en sortir?
Most asylum seekers do, in fact, stop at the first safe country; the UK has always only had a tiny fraction of the total, and loses its collective mind anyway.
Have you ever spoken to any member of the public in support of Reform to base your opinions on, or is this just similar to when every single brexit voters (millions of people) was assumed to be racist and uneducated
Almost everyone voting Brexit was uneducated on the issues, a fact rapidly borne out by actually speaking to them. Actually "uneducated" is quite charitable as quite a lot are racist also. I don't know how anyone can claim otherwise with a straight face.
Which issues were they uneducated on? How many did you speak to, and I'm not talking about the engagement-bait bots on places like the Trending side of Twitter
A lot of Republican supporters would have, and still might, insist that the US's current purge is focused on "criminals" despite the quota-driven shitfest it's become. People say a lot of things, and they rarely line up with policies in practice.
> Reform would get in and throw out all the "undesirables" (basically anyone without a British Passport at first, sure they won't stop there)
I think that is an exaggerated view from a distance. I see no evidence they can do that, or want to. At the time of the Brexit campaign Farage said he wanted skilled immigrants (he gave the example of Indian doctors immigrating in the 1970s as the wort of thing he wanted). Nor can the country afford to lose skilled people. Its worth remembering that Reform would not agree to what Elon Musk wanted in return for funding so I think its safe to assume Reform would not be as extreme as the current US government.
I am of foreign birth, as is my younger daughter (she was born abroad) and I am not particularly worried. I would worry if Rupert Lowe's Restore party started making gains, or Ben Habib's Advance party.
> I'm really not sure how likely them attaining power
They are doing well in the polls now but my feeling is they are peaking. Letting on too many Conservative defectors makes them look at lot less of an anti-establishment party (a huge part of their appeal) and they are becoming too extreme (I think in reaction to the splash, mostly on social media) made by Advance and Restore (one of those is what Elon Musk endorses, so that gives you an idea where they are).