Alex Piletska comments in article on Ukrainian immigrants losing UK settlement option

5 November 2026

Ending the ten-year long residence route to settlement in the UK will be one of a long list of changes that can reset people’s journey to settlement. The decision to remove the Ukraine Schemes from counting towards long residence in 2024 was “an extreme option” Alex Piletska tells Rory MacNeish in his article on how such decisions impacted the lives of Ukrainian immigrants to the UK in Lacuna Magazine. Those who applied for the before the rule change “had no idea that doing so would irreversibly destroy whatever qualifying period they had already built up,” says Alex.

Removing Ukraine Schemes from the long residence route that includes time spent in the UK on temporary routes reset that route to settlement fir Ukrainians who made a home in the UK long before the conflict with Russia began. Now the Labour Government’s “earned settlement” proposals are about to end long residence as an option for everyone.