JCWI Press Releases

12 July 2006

New report today: Immigration rules create underclass, fuel irregular migration

Media contact: Rhian Beynon 0207 553 7464/079102 48417

All migrants who have lived in the UK two years or more should eventually get the right to remain permanently, regardless of whether they are here lawfully says a new JCWI report, published today. The migration NGO also recommends politicians across the spectrum urgently consider a number of reforms to an immigration system which is in danger of perpetuating a migrant underclass and failing to address UK society's needs.

In the report, to be debated at a Parliamentary meeting tomorrow, JCWI is calling for a cross-party consensus on a regularisation programme to address the predicament of up to 570,000 people living irregularly in the UK including those who have overstayed work and student visas, failed asylum seekers, and trafficked persons. No party in government will have the resources to readily deport them. In the meantime they are deprived of full rights and vulnerable to exploitation because of their immigration status.

Often these groups have entered, or remain in the UK to escape developing world poverty or human rights violations. They are here in an unregulated immigration capacity because many non-EEA migrants are denied legitimate migration routes and full rights. In addition to creating an underclass vulnerable to discrimination and exploitation, the current immigration system

• Helps fuel the trafficking industry
• Damages employee protection by making a section of the migrant workforce vulnerable to exploitation
• Denies legitimate business sector access to a source of skills and labour
• Undermines the managed migration policy
• And denies local authorities vital information about migration flows which would enable them to plan for service delivery.

Habib Rahman, Chief Executive of JCWI

"It's a political reality that around half a million irregular migrants can't readily be deported and EU migration alone cannot be relied on to fill the jobs many of them are doing. It's time to get real, put this beyond politics and start talking practical solutions.

"The starting point must be rights for all migrants. In the end a system that denies full rights to all migrants in the UK is both socially unjust and is creating losers all round. It makes life difficult for business, workers and for any government."

JCWI's Recognising Rights, Recognising Political Realities sets out a practical model for a regularisation scheme which would ensure that a large proportion of this vulnerable group could readily obtain legal protection. The recommendations are that

• Irregular immigrants who have lived in the UK for seven years and do not have a serious criminal record should obtain Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) automatically
• Those who lived here at least two years, and can meet further criteria such as proof of employment or family ties should get five years' temporary leave to remain with the eventual prospect of earning ILR
• Those who can show they have been trafficked under coercion an/or subjected to sex, or other labour, exploitation should also get a grant of temporary leave with the prospect of earning ILR
• The Government could consider these proposals as part of a one-off time-limited regularisation. In addition or alternatively it could look at using a seven-year residency rule to build a permanent regularisation process into the immigration rules

However JCWI says that regularisation alone is not the answer to tackling long term issues of irregular migration and labour exploitation. Some of the other recommendations in Recognising Rights Recognising Political Realities are:

1. The Government should urgently review the new Points Based Scheme for non-EEA economic migration so as to ensure the limitations on settlement rights and category switching do not contribute to any continuance of an irregular migrant presence in the UK

2. In particular all regular non-EEA economic migrants entering the UK, whether skilled or unskilled, should enjoy the prospect of earning Indefinite Leave to Remain

3. The Government should urgently review ratification of the major treaties promoting migrant rights, i.e, the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings Warsaw, the UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families; and the European Convention on the Legal Status of Migrant Workers

4. The right to work should be granted to asylum applicants whose case decision is pending and failed asylum seekers whose removal is not imminent or who the Home Office accepts cannot be removed

Note to editors:

1. Recognising Rights, Recognising Political Realities: The Case for Regularising Irregular Migrants will be available in PDF from www. jcwi.org.uk from 14 July or before this date by contacting rhian.beynon@jcwi.org.uk

2. Case studies of migrants who would benefit from regularisation are being made available via a number of NGOs. For further information please contact Rhian Beynon, JCWI's Communications Officer in the first instance

3. Neil Gerrard MP, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Refugees will be hosting a meeting tomorrow (Thursday 13 July 2006) to debate the contents of JCWI's proposals. For more information please contact Rhian Beynon.