Amnesty for Undocumented Migrants

Bambos Charalambous Excerpts

Monday 19th July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I congratulate the 103,440 people who signed the petition, including 447 from my constituency of Enfield, Southgate, enabling the debate to take place. I thank the hon. Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) for leading the debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee.

It is not often that I find myself speaking in a debate in which the Prime Minister has a different view from the official Government position, but this is one such time. On previous occasions, both as Mayor of London and as a Cabinet Minister, the Prime Minister stated his support for having an amnesty for undocumented migrants. Whereas the Government say that the immigration rules already provide for undocumented migrants to regularise their status, and that such provision would unduly reward those who have not complied with immigration law, that fails to recognise the reality of the situation. There are tens of thousands of people in the UK who are undocumented, and the Government are either unaware of them, which smacks of incompetence, or unwilling to deal with the problem.

As the Prime Minister pointed out in a radio interview on LBC in 2013, when he was Mayor of London:

“If you have been here for 10 or 12 years, I’m afraid the authorities no longer really pursue you. They give up. Why not be honest about what is going on? Ultimately, you have got to reflect reality. Otherwise they are not engaged in the economy, they are not being honest with the system, they are not paying their taxes properly and it is completely crazy.”

Expanding on the topics that the Prime Minister touched on, the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants points out in its excellent briefing for the debate that, according to its research, 82% of those who are undocumented arrived in the UK via legal routes and have fallen out of status. That point was made passionately by my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra).

The first point I wish to make is that the current immigration system, and its cost, is a factor in people becoming undocumented. Many Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), mentioned the cost of making applications to become regularised. The prime route for acquiring indefinite leave to remain is 10 years of continuous residency, but people have to apply first for temporary leave to remain for two and a half years, then keep renewing it until they have acquired the 10 years. Applying for leave to remain is expensive—a successful applicant under this route will have had to pay a total of £12,937 in fees. The application process is very complex, and lots of evidence is required to be submitted. If someone slips up just once and does not submit the correct forms during the 10 years, they will become undocumented. As a consequence, adult undocumented migrants will be able to regularise their status only by applying for indefinite leave to remain, but they qualify for ILR only if they are aged 18 to 25 and have lived in the UK for over half their life. If they are over 25, they have to show that they have lived in the UK for more than 20 years and prove that they have strong ties to the UK and cannot relocate to their country of origin. Talk about making it tough for people to regularise their status. It smacks of a continuation of the hostile environment that was used mercilessly against certain sections of the community.

With undocumented migrants being denied access to work, accommodation and health services, they are easy prey for those who want to exploit them. As a consequence, they are driven underground, do under-the-counter work and are totally dependent on the shady individuals whom they now serve. The exploitation of migrants was excellently commented on by my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) and by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). As the Prime Minister pointed out, if tens of thousands of undocumented migrants are working but not paying taxes, it will impact on the economy, so it is in everyone’s interest to ensure that urgent action is taken to regularise their status. It is not just the economy that would benefit—so would our public health, as it was only last week that we heard that, in some parts of London, undocumented migrants were being turned away from GP surgeries, where they were trying to get vaccinated against covid, because they are reluctant to give their names and addresses, for fear of being arrested. Meanwhile, those who were turned away are not putting just themselves at risk. As my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) and the hon. Member for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe) pointed out, they risk spreading the virus among the wider community.

The Home Office does not know even roughly how many undocumented migrants are present in the UK, and it was heavily criticised for that by the Public Accounts Committee in its September 2020 report, “Immigration enforcement”. Another problem that the Government face is that they have hollowed out the immigration enforcement system. As such, they have effectively outsourced the service to the general public, leaving it up to landlords, employers and the NHS to notify the Government if someone is undocumented. The National Audit Office last did an estimate of the number of undocumented migrants living and working in the UK in 2005, and it put the figure at 430,000. There has been no official assessment of the number since then, so not only do the Government not know the scale of the problem, but even if they did and these figures are still accurate, they could not do much about it.

Can the Minister tell me whether the Home Office has made any assessment of the number of people who are currently here and are undocumented, and what the Government’s plan for tackling this issue is? The Minister will no doubt say that anyone who is here and is undocumented is here illegally, but if the Government know this, what are they doing about it? Even the Prime Minister does not believe that the Home Office will detain and deport 430,000 people, so we have a perfect storm of the Government being aware of a problem and being unable and unwilling to deal with it, with tens of thousands of people living and working in the UK undocumented.

The petition proposes an amnesty for all undocumented migrants, but a more comprehensive approach would be to focus on an accessible “route to regularised” system and meaningful reforms to stop people from falling out of status, as mentioned by my hon. Friends the Members for Slough (Mr Dhesi) and for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma). This will offer a longer-term solution to the problem. I note that the Irish Government are currently looking at new plans for a fairer pathway to regularisation for undocumented migrants with a period of four years’ residency in Ireland. The current methods of regularising status in the UK are onerous and cumbersome, and need an urgent overhaul. In addition, the exorbitant level of fees for visas is scandalous, and clearly another barrier designed to make it harder for people to regularise their status—a continuation of the Home Office’s malevolent hostile environment.

I therefore ask the Minister whether, as this problem is not going away any time soon, the Government will make it easier for undocumented people to have their status regularised, and what the long-term plan for addressing the problem is. It is surely in all our interests that the basic needs of everyone here are met, and that— undocumented or otherwise—everyone can contribute safely, openly and without fear to our communities. For that to happen, we need to see change.