People move – always have, always will 

People move – whether it’s for work, to study, be with loved ones, find safety, or simply a better life. Sometimes that’s down the road, or to the nearest city, and sometimes it’s across a border. The numbers of people on the move will always fluctuate – whether that’s because of crises overseas, like the war in Ukraine, or simply because the Government is counting the figures differently.

People moving across borders is a fact of life, not a problem to be solved. We must ensure people are able to travel here safely, access decent work and housing once they arrive, and settle if they choose. Recently, we saw how up and down the country how people welcomed Ukrainian refugees, opened their homes and built community. We must ensure our communities are supported to continue welcoming all their new neighbours with open arms.  

Migrants are and always have been an important part of our story, and we should celebrate the fact that so many people want to make the UK their home. They enrich our society, make our country a better place, and are a vital part of our workforce and our communities. 

The numbers aren’t the problem – the way our system treats people is 

This Government’s hostile immigration policies are designed to make life as difficult as possible for migrant communities. People seeking safety are forced to live in limbo, sometimes for years, waiting for a decision from the Home Office. Asylum seekers are denied the right to work, expected to live off just £45 a week, and many are housed in prison-style accommodation away from their local communities.

New laws like the Inhumane Migration Act step up the cruelty by denying people the chance to ever get their asylum claim heard, in breach of international law.

Many people with the right to stay are treated with similar inhumanity. Too many visas come with no option to put down roots in the UK, and others include a long and expensive 10-year path to settlement. That means people must jump through complex legal hoops and pay eye-watering sums to renew their visa every few years for a decade, before they can get stable status. This long route traps people in a cycle of poverty and precarity. It damages people’s physical and mental health, and too often causes people to fall out of status and become undocumented. 

Migration isn’t the real issue here, even if that’s what this Government wants us to believe. We’re all facing very real issues, including a cost-of-living crisis that’s making life harder for everyone, huge NHS waiting times, workers up and down the country forced to take strike action to demand better pay and ever more people turning to food banks to meet their basic needs. Meanwhile, we’re the sixth-largest economy in the world, and there are over 250,000 empty homes across the UK. The Government should act to tackle these issues, instead of stoking division by scapegoating people who move. 

The government is putting lives at risk

On 22 November 2023, two people lost their lives in the English Channel, trying to reach safety in the UK. We've seen this happen before, and we'll see it happen again unless and until the government puts in place real routes to safety.

In 2023 so far, people from Afghanistan have been the largest nationality crossing the Channel in small boats. Why are people from Afghanistan risking their lives to seek safety in the UK? Because the resettlement scheme the Home Office has promised so many times barely exists. So far this year, the government has granted safety to just 246 people from Afghanistan on its resettlement scheme. The latest ONS stats show that more people are in need of our protection, but the government has slashed the numbers of people granted resettlement from 20,000 to just 3000. These numbers are shameful. People at risk in Afghanistan - climate activists, LGBTQ+ people, human rights advocates - were promised safety by our government. Instead, they're being forced to live in hiding for years on end, or risk their lives in small boats to make it to our shores.

As we’ve told this government time and again, the best way to prevent life-threatening crossings is to create safe routes to asylum here - so people can apply for travel documents, rejoin family, and rebuild their lives in our communities as quickly as possible. 

The backlog is caused by slow processing, not more asylum applications 

The UK receives far fewer asylum applications than other countries – we receive 8.4 asylum applications per 10,000 population, compared to 13.8 for Spain and 23 for Germany.  

But though fewer people apply for asylum here than in those countries, our backlog is far higher. In fact, the latest data shows the asylum backlog at record high, with 175,000 people waiting for a decision. While they do so, they are dependent on asylum support, constantly at risk of destitution and exploitation.

This is because the Home Office hasn’t been processing application efficiently, and staff turnover is at a record high. At the moment, people are waiting an average of around 18 months to hear back from the Home Office. During this time, they’re not allowed to work, and many are placed in detention-style temporary accommodation. Everyone seeking safety should have access to a fair hearing and quick and effective decision-making, no matter how they travelled to the UK. 

Temporary work visas are not the solution 

Everyone deserves safe conditions, decent pay and protection if employers seek to take advantage of them. But hostile immigration policies have put migrant workers’ rights under attack and run borders through our workplaces. They make work less safe for everyone and pit worker against worker. To make matters worse, they bar migrant workers from accessing the support the rest of us are afforded, trapping them in a cycle of poverty. 

This Government is intent on treating migrant as economic commodities, issuing more and more short-term work visas to try and plug job shortages in sectors like care, farming and hospitality. The recent rise in care work visas is due to the fact we desperately need workers in this essential sector, which is currently on its knees. But temporary work visas are not the solution, and there is clear evidence that they push workers into mistreatment, exploitation, and can make people undocumented. And these are many of the same people the government called “heroes” and clapped for throughout the pandemic.  

·       We should be celebrating the fact there are people who want to come to the UK and work in sectors like health, care and farming where they are so desperately needed, and making it easier for them to live a fulfilled lives once they get here, not trying to make their lives harder.

Breaking our moral duty and international law

Instead of actually solving the problem - by creating an immigration system that works for everyone - the government is pushing through legislation that would effectively end refugee protection in this country and see children and survivors of trafficking locked up. People who travel here by small boat - because there is no other way for them to get here safely - would never be able to get status, the right to work, or the ability to rebuild their lives here in their new communities. Instead, thousands more people will be made undocumented and vulnerable to hostile immigration policies. The government still has time to fix this – it should repeal the Illegal Migration Act in its entirety, and immediately introduce safe routes to ensure people can travel to the UK safely.   

Stand with migrants 

The truth is, no matter how difficult you make it, people will always move - whether that’s by force or by choice. Building ever higher walls does not stop people needing to cross them. It just makes it more dangerous and damaging for those who do, and the communities around them. We must ensure migrants can come to the UK safely, and be greeted with welcome and community when they get here, regardless of why they choose to move.  

 

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