Better than nothing:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/19/channel-migrants-given-right-to-work/Channel migrants have been quietly given the right to work in sectors including care, construction and agriculture and can still retain access to state-subsidised bed and board under a Home Office scheme.
Nearly 16,000 asylum seekers, including those who crossed the Channel in small boats, have been allowed to work in a single year, according to data obtained under Freedom of Information (FOI) laws.
They have been allowed to work in occupations in which there are recognised staff shortages, and are paid 80 per cent of the going pay rate.
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The scheme allowing asylum seekers to take jobs after a year is a legacy of an EU law from 2005, which reversed a measure introduced by Sir Tony Blair in 2002 barring illegal migrants from any right to work.
16000 is of course a ridiculously small number:
Immigration experts believe the number of working asylum seekers for 2023 could have increased even further because of the extra demand for cheap foreign labour to plug staff shortages in care homes, the NHS, construction and agriculture. Backlogs of asylum seekers waiting over a year rose to 61,000 last year.
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They have cited the potential economic benefits in boosting growth and savings from migrants no longer receiving state benefits and free accommodation and instead paying income tax on their earnings.
Peter Walsh, a senior researcher with the Migration Oberservatory at Oxford University, said he was surprised at the numbers granted but suggested it could be linked to the widening of the shortage occupation list to include care workers, where there was acuted demand for staff.
He said there were economic benefits in that it would reduce the cost of accommodation and asylum support as well as generating money for the Exchequer via taxes. “There are psychological positives because it is not very good for people to be out of the labour market,” he said.
“The longer people are out of the labour market, the harder it is for them to get back into the labour market. There is also another practical advantage that if you allow people to work legally, they are less likely to work illegally. It is potentially protecting against that.”
Who could possibly be against such obvious reasoning?
Miriam Cates, who co-chairs the New Conservatives Group of MPs, which has campaigned for a tougher approach to migration, said: “It’s understandable that asylum seekers might want to have a job while waiting for their claims to be processed.
“But we cannot solve the significant problems associated with irregular migration unless we deter people from crossing to the UK illegally – and this is the opposite of a deterrent.”
Cates also looks like what we would expect: