When you next pop into hospital, could your doctor or nurse be an asylum seeker? That is now a possibility, thanks to a recent court case. Lawyers Stephanie Harrison KC and Isaac Ricca-Richardson acted on behalf of two doctors, called ANS and YYS in the court records, who wanted to practice. This came after the Immigration Salary List tightened restrictions on which jobs asylum seekers could do, once they had the right to work.
It might seem odd to people that asylum seekers can work at all. They haven’t yet been granted refugee status, so the validity of their case is still in doubt. However, although asylum seekers are initially banned from working, after 12 months they are allowed to apply for jobs. Critics have argued that the ban is unfair and self-defeating, as asylum seekers live on a small subsistence income (£9.95 a week if their accommodation provides meals but £49.18 if it doesn’t). Surely if they work they will cost the taxpayer less. In addition, it will help them to integrate as they work alongside others.
That seems especially true in this case. After all, the two claimants in the case are qualified, specialist doctors. They had trained in the NHS funded REACHE programme at Salford Royal Hospital, which trains asylum seeking nurses and doctors. They argued, not without merit, that there were workforce shortages in their specialisms.
The problem here is that this understandable case will only be the thin edge of the wedge. Once it is accepted that asylum seekers can work no matter what, then that will become an even greater draw to an already overloaded system. Why bother with trying to get a legal visa at all, when your chances of entering the British labour market are greater if you come illegally.
Perhaps if this was restricted to a small handful of professions it might work, but it is unlikely that lawyers would leave it there. This was already visible in the arguments made by Garden Court Chambers, who said that the ban on working was incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights and was a breach of the Public Sector Equality Duty (under section 149 of the Equality Act) because it negatively impacted the mental health of female or disabled doctors and because having asylum seekers left dependent on taxpayer support “undermined integration and community relations”.
It doesn’t take long to move from letting doctors work to letting every asylum seeker work (and the NHS press release notes that this decision also applies to pharmacists and some specialists like homeopaths and art therapists). That increases the pull factor, the chances for exploitation, and could blur the line between legal and illegal immigration even further.
It’s already obvious that many asylum seekers come here in order to work illegally. Consider the recently uncovered UK-wide network of more than 100 shops run by Kurdish criminals. There they sold illegal cigarettes, while “ghost directors” were used on the paperwork to mislead the authorities. HMRC estimates that illegal cigarette and vape sales cost them £2.2 billion annually in lost revenue.
Another area is the delivery apps, where account sharing allows asylum seekers to illegally work using the profiles of legal workers. One Brazilian asylum seeker reportedly earnt up to £6,000 a month using multiple delivery apps. Well, at least there is one set of entrepreneurs who the Government isn’t trying to regulate into the ground.
There are also many asylum seekers who are exploited into work. The Vietnamese are one of the most exploited by their own criminal networks. The work tends to be segregated by sex, with the men growing cannabis and women working in nail bars or prostitution. Indeed, in 2021 the French minister Clément Beaune accused Britain of having “an economic model of, sometimes, quasi-modern slavery”. The French have repeatedly claimed that one reason for the small boats crisis is that the relative ease of working illegally attracts illegal migrants to Britain, who can use the asylum system to bypass controls on legal work immigration.
Amazingly, asylum seekers who have an existing right to work get to keep it even while their asylum claim is under review, due to section 3c of the Immigration Act 1971. Someone on a student visa who claimed asylum would be allowed to keep working the same amount of allowed hours, even while their asylum case was being examined and even if their visa had come to an end. With appeals, they can keep working for months or even years, until their claim is finally resolved. Unsurprisingly, the number of those coming on student visas who then claim asylum as their visa comes to its end has risen — with 133,760 people who came legally since 2021 claiming asylum — leading to visa brakes to stop this abuse of the system.
These examples show how our asylum system is already abused. Allowing them to work as soon as they arrive wouldn’t necessarily change this, as many lack the language skills and qualifications which would allow them to enter more legitimate fields. Others have come with criminal intentions or had their way to Britain paid by criminal gangs who demand illegal work as recompense. Those who do work legally will largely do so in low-wage industries, only cementing our existing economic problems and likely proving to be a net fiscal cost to the taxpayer. We do have a shortage of doctors, but it is due to government regulation. In Denmark, the government has implemented policies to end the shortage of nurses and this year will accept no migrant nurses from outside the EU/EEA.
The solution, whether it’s doctors or Deliveroo drivers, is not to cave in and legitimise the ill effects of illegal migration after the fact. Instead, we need strong borders, the removal of pull factors, swift deportations, and firm justice against firms who operate outside the law.
