New proposals that would force poorly paid migrant workers to wait longer for earned settlement are nothing more than an assault on working-class people

• Andrea Egan is the general secretary of Unison

Billionaires and politicians fan the flames of hate, but without migrant workers, Britain would grind to a halt. That’s especially true when it comes to health and social care: more than a fifth of the NHS workforce is made up of migrant staff. The same proportion of care workers nationally are migrants, rising to half in London.

Yet these workers, many of whom are members of Unison, have increasingly become a punchbag for politicians. In particular, they have become a scapegoat for this Labour government, which has sunk to a new low with its proposals on earned settlement. These changes could see low-paid public sector workers, including carers, forced to wait 15 years before being granted indefinite leave to remain, instead of the five years they were promised before they made the decision to come here. These changes would entrench and worsen the environment of fear and exploitation that defines the current system.

Andrea Egan is the general secretary of Unison