Lift the ban
I am not free while any man or woman is unfree. Give every other human being every right you claim for yourself—this is my doctrine.
I know very well from personal experience, as a person seeking asylum here in the UK, how difficult life can be when you don’t have the right to work. Asylum seekers face unceasing stress, deprivation and depression because of the limits imposed on when we can go out to earn a wage.
Volunteering has been a saving grace for me. I want to feel busy and useful and I do around 45 hours of volunteer work a week. I’ve done a lot of training and have been learning new skills in the nonprofit sector. I have built a strong CV. If I was ever given the opportunity to do a demanding paid role, I would be fully equipped to handle it.
The right to work has always been important to me and my fellow asylum seekers but today it is critically so. Despite the cost-of-living crisis, we still only receive £5.84 per day to live on. Lifting the ban on work for asylum seekers would also support the UK economy—it is perverse not to allow us to fill vacancies when the country is facing a labour shortage. This is especially important given the increasing number of people waiting a long time for a decision.
Sadly, not everybody who applies for asylum in the UK will be granted it. But while they are waiting for the decision, people deserve to live in dignity. The UK government’s quarterly immigration statistics revealed that in the 12 months to June 2022, 89,231 people had been waiting for more than six months. This record number is approximately a 65 per cent increase on the previous year and more than 10 times higher than the number 10 years ago: that means that more than two thirds of all decisions on an initial claim now take longer than six months.
While waiting for a decision, which means they are usually unable to work, asylum seekers are vulnerable to exploitation. During a focus group that I helped to organise with other people seeking asylum, one member ventured: “I would say that the hostile environment is one of the greatest causes of vulnerability to exploitation within the UK. Every aspect of it creates vulnerability… like the financial measures, the fact that people can’t work—surely that’s one of the single greatest factors that will cause people to fall for human traffickers. They must circle around that as a vulnerability to
Give other human beings every right you claim for yourself—this is my doctrine
be exploited!” This is corroborated by a joint report published by the British Red Cross and UN refugee agency in August, which found that asylum seekers in the UK were at risk of being recruited into domestic servitude and modern slavery.
Research I took part in also suggested lifting the ban on working would save more than £200m per year, as labour shortages continue to be a cause of anxiety for many industries. The Migration Observatory recently published a report about the impact of the end of EU free movement on labour shortages. This follows a report by the CBI on how labour shortages are holding back growth. Given the right to work, asylum seekers could help to fill those gaps, like the Ukrainian refugees who I spoke to. Their sponsorship scheme allows them to work, and they are helping to alleviate the staffing crisis in different businesses in the northeast.
This current UK government, regardless of the leader, seem to feel they can make decisions on behalf of people they don’t know, can’t see and think of entirely in dehumanised terms. The results are devastating for people seeking asylum who, like me, are ready and willing to work when given the chance ♦