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What is the ask?

Ensure everyone has the right to work and a straightforward route to regularisation based on employment, regardless of their immigration status. All workers need safe conditions, decent pay, and protection if employers seek to take advantage of them. JCWI is calling on the Government to:

1. Ensure everyone has the right to work to support themselves: repeal the criminal offence of ‘illegal working’ and ‘right to rent’ employer checks
2. Prioritise decent conditions over immigration enforcement: establish a firewall between labour inspectors and immigration enforcement and enforce minimum working standards more rigorously
3. Ensure everyone can rely on the state safety net in times of difficulty: scrap ‘No Recourse to Public Funds’ visa conditions and increase sick pay for all
4. End the cycle that puts workers at the mercy of exploitative employers: ensure all visas include pathways to permanent settlement within a reasonable timeframe and introduce simpler routes to regularisation.

Background 

Hostile Environment policies in work, such as the illegal working offence and employer ‘right to work’ checks, significantly increase the risks of abuse and exploitation for migrant workers. They make it harder for migrants to challenge exploitation, change employers, take time off for sickness and demand fair wages. They drive undocumented workers underground, criminalise them for working to support themselves and leave them unable to report labour rights violations for fear of being reported to immigration enforcement.  

Most migrants are subject to the ‘No Recourse to Public Funds’ (NRPF) condition, meaning they are barred from accessing the state safety net. Undocumented migrants are also cut off from accessing any state support. NRPF restrictions push migrants into poverty, unsustainable debt, destitution, homelessness, and unsafe and overcrowded housing. Since COVID, many workers subject to NRPF have been forced to choose between isolating without pay and continuing to work in dangerous conditions. 

In addition, in recent years, the proportion of migrants on a 10-year route to permanent status has significantly increased. This lengthy, expensive route causes migrants to fall out of status and become undocumented. To compound matters, the number of restrictive, short-term work visas have increased, particularly since the UK left the EU. There is clear evidence that temporary work visas increase the risks of exploitation and trafficking for migrant workers. 

How would it work? 

While the UK criminalises the work of undocumented migrants and makes regularisation a complex process, other countries take a more flexible approach. In Spain, Portugal and France workers have pathways to regularise their stay due to employment. The UK should pursue this approach instead of the current, unevidenced, punitive one. 

Temporary and sector-tied visas trap migrant workers outside of the protections of labour standards enforcement and at the mercy of employers, often in isolated conditions in agricultural or domestic work settings. Pathways to settlement and the ability to change job easily without losing the right to live here would protect people in these circumstances. 

Finally, we need to scrap NRPF and raise the rate of statutory sick pay for all, to ensure everyone has access to a safety net which enables them to take time off work when sick, or to leave exploitative employers. 

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For more detail on this proposal read our longer briefing and our report on undocumented migrants' experiences of COVID, or contact [email protected].