Asylum seekers waiting over a year for claim in UK may be allowed to work under new measures | Home Office
The Ministry of Internal Affairs said that under the package of measures to be announced on Thursday, up to 21,000 refugees who have been waiting for a year for their requests to be processed may be allowed to enter the labor market to earn their living.
As the government tries to clear out asylum hotels, beneficiaries who break the law, work illegally or are found to have enough assets to live without support will be expelled and lose their support payments starting in June.
The developments have been questioned by the Refugee Council over the risk of increased insomnia among those fleeing war and famine.
They came as Shabana Mahmood wrote in a column in the Guardian that she responded to demands from senior figures in the labor movement that ministers stop focusing on immigration and tone down their attacks on the Green party.
The home secretary wrote: “Restoring order at our borders is not only the embodiment of Labor values, it is a necessary condition for a Labor government to do anything.”
Mahmood wrote that Labour’s vision must appeal to the mainstream and be “neither Farage’s nightmare of de facto closed borders nor the Greens’ tale of de facto open borders”. He also said the government planned to launch a new “safe and legal” route in the autumn for students seeking asylum.
The Home Office said there were around 30,600 people waiting to claim asylum in around 200 hotels across England, and 107,000 people were receiving asylum support.
Currently, those living in dispersed accommodation such as private housing receive £48 per week, while those staying in hotels receive £9.95 per person.
Authorities want action by extending work permits for many of the 21,000 people who have been staying in hotels for more than a year.
If they find employment, they are intended to fall into the category of removal of asylum support and eventually leave the country.
The legal obligation under EU law to provide support and accommodation to asylum seekers will be canceled on Thursday, the Home Office said.
Instead, it will be replaced by a conditional approach, so that support is reserved only for those who truly need it and comply with the law.
The measures, which will be determined by parliament and come into force in June, will remove support payments and housing opportunities for asylum seekers who work illegally, are self-supporting, have the right to work or have broken the law.
The Home Office did not respond to questions about whether the 21,000 people would be limited to jobs on the “immigrant wage list”.
Asked what criteria the Home Office would use to decide whether a person has enough assets to survive without financial support, one source said it would be “on a case-by-case basis” and there would be no set threshold.
Keir Starmer and Mahmood face calls from across the labor movement to move towards progressive policies following the Green Party’s victory in the Gorton and Denton byelections.
“A political strategy of taking liberal, progressive voters for granted is clearly flawed,” London mayor Sadiq Khan wrote in the Guardian.
“The vast majority of people considering voting Green are not extremists,” Khan said.
The latest announcement comes after the home secretary visited Denmark last week to see how it was tackling immigration and bringing asylum claims to the lowest level in 40 years.
Mahmood is following the Danish model, where the government is trying to make it less attractive for illegal immigrants to come to the UK.
Today, Thursday, he will give a speech at the IPPR think tank explaining how these reforms are compatible with British values.
Imran Hussain, director of external affairs at the Refugee Council, said: “Forcing people into poverty will not fix the system or deter people fleeing torture or persecution. Instead, it is more likely to force them to sleep rough and make cases harder to resolve by pushing the costs onto local authorities and the NHS.”
