News broke over the weekend that the Home Office has been quietly allowing (or encouraging?) economic migrants to work while waiting for their asylum claims to be processed. This will come as no surprise to readers of this blog. The Home Office bureaucrats have spent years trying to prevent Britain from finally cutting the tentacles of the European Union. A change in government means nothing to these people.
Travelling to work each morning, I drive past a budget hotel used as a dumping ground for young Middle Eastern asylum seekers. The bus stop adjacent to the hotel usually has a queue of young men waiting for the early morning bus.
I have often wondered where they could be travelling at that early hour. Perhaps they were learning English or attending college training courses, courtesy of the British taxpayer, of course. They aren’t allowed to work until their request for asylum is settled, or so we have always been told. Now we know the truth.
According to the official gov.uk website, ‘Asylum seekers or failed asylum seekers awaiting the outcome of an asylum claim or further submission cannot work as an employee or a worker, even for a voluntary organisation, unless they have been granted permission to work under Paragraph 360 or 360C of the Immigration Rules.’
Data obtained through Freedom of Information (FOI) regulations show that nearly 16,000 asylum seekers, including some who crossed the Channel in small boats, were permitted to work in one year. This comes in spite of the useless Tory Party and the even more useless Prime Minister making stopping the boats and deterring them from crossing a priority.
Illegal Channel migrants (who the former Home Secretary branded ‘invaders’) can now work in industries such as care, construction, and agriculture while still receiving state-subsidised housing through a Home Office initiative. And in occupations where there is a shortage of staff, they are paid 80% of the going rate.
We must ask here how on earth young male undocumented migrants can be allowed to work with elderly and vulnerable men and women in the care sector? Having destroyed their documents before being collected in RNLI floating taxi’s, these men could be murderers, rapists or jihadi’s. We just don’t know.
If migrants earn more than £49.13 per week (the state subsistence allowance), they can negotiate with the Home Office the possibility of continuing to stay in asylum accommodation by making a financial contribution towards the cost.
The French, whom the media continually blame for not stopping the boats, say Britain’s generous work and benefits system encourages migrant crossings. UK officials have always denied that this was the reason.
A spokesman for the Migration Watch think tank said: “How can we take seriously the government’s professed commitment to stopping the boats when such a ploy is under way?”
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Top Image: Philafrenzy, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. A Home Office Immigration Enforcement vehicle in north London
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