Lift the Ban

People seeking asylum in the UK are banned from working until a year after their claim has been submitted. Even then, they can only apply for specific jobs that the government deems there to be a shortage of workers to fill, and few people have actually been given permission to work upon application. This blog post will explore why the current system does not benefit either the country or asylum seekers. The Lift the Ban coalition will be discussed, and the UK’s policy regarding asylum seekers’ employment will be compared with other countries.

The current system does not benefit the country. For example, asylum seekers are given somewhere to live and monetary support because they are not allowed to earn a wage to cover these expenses for themselves. This is a cost for the government which is choosing to miss out on allowing skilled workers to utilise their expertise to support the country, have enough of an income to contribute to the economy through consumer spending, and pay tax. It is estimated that the UK economy could gain £333 million per year if asylum seekers were not banned from working. In addition, there is no correlation between countries that allow asylum seekers to work and those with higher levels of asylum claims, so lifting the ban would not drastically increase the number coming to the UK.

The current system also does not benefit asylum seekers. For example, they get just £7 per day to cover food, clothing, toiletries, phone credit, travel to healthcare appointments and school etc. This can affect asylum seekers both physically (e.g. malnutrition due to not being able to afford enough good food) and mentally (e.g. anxiety about a lack of money). In addition, people who have risked everything to leave their country of origin can find working helps with feeling useful and being part of a community. However, it is also important to remember that there are various factors which may mean employment is not suitable for an asylum seeker, such as having to spend a significant amount of time working on their claim or being severely affected by trauma. Asylum seekers must therefore not be obliged to work, just have the option to do so.

Lift the Ban is a coalition of more than 300 organisations from across the UK (including local authorities, educational institutions, charities, faith groups, and trade unions) who have come together to call on the government to give people seeking asylum the right to work. The specific request is for people seeking asylum, and their adult dependants, to have the right to work from six months after lodging their claim and to not have this be constrained to specific jobs that the government deems there to be a shortage of workers to fill. Six months has been chosen because this prevents the government from using the argument that lifting the ban completely would encourage economic migrants to make unfounded asylum claims, as the Home Office aims to make decisions on all straightforward claims within six months. There are currently around 62,000 people who would benefit from this, due to having been waiting for a decision on their asylum claim for longer than six months. In addition, as many of those who initially receive negative decisions have these overturned when their cases are reexamined on appeal, Lift the Ban also proposes that people who are granted the right to work retain this until the appeal process has concluded.

It is helpful to compare the UK’s stance on this issue with that of other countries. The year-long wait followed by restricted job opportunities makes the UK an outlier in Europe and in comparison to other wealthy countries such as the USA, Australia and Canada. The UK diverged from these comparable countries in 2002. Furthermore, another reason why Lift the Ban has chosen to focus on there being a change after six months rather than removing restrictions completely is because most other European countries have a time restriction of some form, so it would be unlikely for the UK to be more lenient.

If you are a part of the 81% of the UK public which wants people seeking asylum to have the right to vote, and would like to help with convincing the government to make the necessary changes to allow this, please review the Lift the Ban Activism Pack: https://lifttheban.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Lift-the-Ban-Activism-Pack.pdf. For more information on this topic, please see the Lift the Ban website: https://lifttheban.co.uk.