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The ‘Migration Advisory Committee’ (MAC), the body that advises the government on migration has said that asylum seekers, including those who have illegally crossed the Channel, should be given the green light to work in any job just six months after arriving in the UK. Currently, they can only work in specific roles after waiting over a year for their asylum claims to be processed, and even then, their choices are limited.
In 2022, about 16,000 asylum seekers got the nod to work, mainly in areas like care, health and construction, to fill alleged ‘shortages’ in the economy. (Of course, when employers talk about ‘shortages’, what they are usually referring to are jobs where the wages paid are not high enough to attract local workers to fill those vacancies.) The MAC chair, Professor Brian Bell, argues that letting asylum seekers work after a six-month waiting period is ‘fair’, keeping their skills sharp and helping them integrate better. No matter that the bulk of these asylum seekers are more likely to be economic migrants who know they stand a good chance of being allowed to stay if they claim asylum. And, no matter that they have not sought asylum in safe countries like France. Some, of course, have applied for asylum elsewhere and been rejected; France turns down three times more applicants in the first instance than we do. They then opt to pay criminal gangs to get them here illegally.
Rewarding such criminal behaviour will worsen the crisis. Claims of there being little evidence that giving asylum seekers permission to work after a six-month wait, or even after twelve months, adds to the pull factor strike us as counterintuitive. Those arguing this overlook the extra leverage it affords the traffickers to make the packages they offer more attractive. This loosening of the system will have the same impact as an amnesty would. Indeed, what is proposed is no more than a slightly delayed amnesty, in all but name. It will incentivise small boat crossings and pump more cash into the overflowing coffers of evil traffickers, who don’t give a damn about how many of their human cargo might perish. Meanwhile, the burden on the hard-pressed taxpayer will get ever heavier.
Besides illegal migration there is of course the current, eye-popping, levels of net migration – over 20 times the number who crossed the Channel illegally in small boats last year. Remember, our population grew by eight million people, of which seven million was due to immigrants and their children, in just 20 years, and when migration was less than half the level we have now. That is why we, like around 60% of the public, are concerned about the scale of immigration and why we worry about the future stability, cohesion and nature of our society.
This is a preview of Migration Watch’s free weekly newsletter. Please consider signing up to the newsletter directly, you can do so here and will receive an email copy of the newsletter every Friday as soon as it is released.