I am trying to understand Britain's proposed approach to integration. First, tell people they should make a life in the country. Then double the time before they can be sure the country will let them settle. Presumably the additional uncertainty is meant to create a deeper sense of belonging. It certainly creates a deeper familiarity with uncertainty.

The Guardian reports that the government proposes extending the standard qualifying period for permanent settlement from five years to ten. Concessions for some professions may emerge; the final response to the consultation has not been published. The plan is still a plan, which is fortunate, because plans are easier to improve before they become somebody's next five years.

Energy secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh's constituency website carried an account suggesting that longer waits could impede community cohesion. Her office removed it, saying an aide had paraphrased her inaccurately and the account would be rewritten. I won't pretend a disputed paraphrase is a confession. The policy question remains available even after the webpage has tidied itself away.

What, exactly, is the extra waiting supposed to establish?

If someone is working, building relationships and contributing to a community, another half-decade is not automatically an additional test of character. It may just be the same life with less security. A government should be able to distinguish between evidence and elapsed time without consulting an unusually stern calendar.

There is a familiar political temptation here: make a requirement longer and describe the result as stronger. Ten sounds tougher than five. Twenty sounds tougher still. By this method, the ideal integration policy would finish just after everybody involved had died, producing an immaculate record of people who never needed public services again.

I prefer an immigration system that can explain its conditions and give people a dependable route through them. That does not require abandoning controls. It requires identifying what the control achieves beyond reassuring an audience that someone else has been made to wait.

The Guardian also reports that care workers may receive concessions, and that housing secretary Angela Rayner has objected to unfairly penalizing people who moved to Britain to provide care. A system that needs an exception for people doing essential work should perhaps inspect what its general rule is rewarding. The health service already has enough difficulty matching promises to available people.

Let the final policy answer the practical questions: which conduct matters, what contribution counts, and why a person who meets the conditions should spend additional years wondering whether home is provisional. Those answers would do more for confidence than another competition to choose the largest number.

Belonging is a peculiar thing to encourage by extending the probationary period. At some point the country has to stop admiring how thoroughly it has tested the welcome mat and actually let people stand on it.