Yahoo News Channel migrants should be allowed to work in any job after six months, government advisers say
Asylum seekers including Channel migrants should be allowed to work in any job six months after reaching the UK, the Government’s official migration advisers have said.
The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) is expected to recommend the move as part of an overhaul of the rules on migrant workers’ access to shortage occupations such as care, construction and agriculture.
Asylum seekers are currently only entitled to work if they have been waiting more than a year for their asylum claim to be processed. They are also only allowed to work in designated shortage occupations on a wage set at 80 per cent of the going rate.
The Telegraph revealed at the weekend that in 2022, nearly 16,000 asylum seekers were granted the right to work by the Home Office to plug shortages in sectors such as care, health, construction and other trades, according to official data released under Freedom of Information laws.
It prompted calls from senior Tory former ministers and MPs for the practice to be scrapped because of their concerns that it could act as a “pull factor” to encourage more migrants to come illegally to the UK.
But Professor Brian Bell, chair of the MAC, said the committee believed that the rules should be relaxed to enable asylum seekers to work in a wider range of jobs at an earlier stage.
“A shorter period of restriction on the right to work would be beneficial.,” he said.
“Six months is often suggested and would be a reasonable period.
“Because we grant a substantial majority of asylum claims, these individuals will end up remaining in the UK and so earlier access to the labour market will ensure their skills are kept up to date and helps with integration.”
The MAC has been commissioned by James Cleverly, the Home Secretary, to develop an alternative mechanism to replace the shortage occupation list (SOL), which the Government has pledged to abolish.
Professor Bell said this could provide an opportunity to widen the range of jobs that asylum seekers should be able to take up.
“When the SOL is abolished (in the forthcoming Immigration Rules changes) there will have to be some rules about asylum seekers,” he said.
“At the moment only jobs on the SOL can be filled. This has never made sense to us – why should someone be able to work in social care but not teach at a university?”
The MAC has cited research showing that the longer migrants were denied the right to work, the less likely they were to join the labour market if their asylum application was granted. It also found no evidence to support the claims that it was a “pull factor.”
Britain has a more restrictive approach than other countries with Germany allowing asylum seekers to work after three months, Belgium four months, the US six months and France and Spain six to nine months.
A change to six months would open up the chance to work to a much bigger pool of asylum seekers.
The number of asylum seekers waiting more than six months for a decision rose to 124,000 in 2023, up from 26,000 in 2019, double the number of those waiting more than a year.
Any expansion of the scheme, however, is likely to be resisted.
Nigel Farage, the former UKIP leader, said: “Once the traffickers can advertise jobs and free board, even more will want to come. Rwanda is completely irrelevant in comparison to this.”
