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We’re taking the government to court over migrants facing wrongful eviction due to Home Office delays
Echoing the Windrush scandal, migrants with UK visas are stuck without paperwork, meaning they face wrongful eviction and benefit cut offs, writes Jasmine Akhurst, immigration advisor at RAMFEL
Jasmine Akhurst is an immigration advisor at the Refugee and Migrant Forum of Essex and London
My organisation, the Refugee and Migrant Forum of Essex and London (RAMFEL) is taking the government to court over their mistreatment of hundreds of thousands of people with valid immigration status in the UK.
Echoing the Windrush scandal, people with valid ‘section 3C leave’ have for years faced the extreme consequences of the government’s ‘hostile environment’, with many losing jobs, being threatened with eviction and fundamentally made to feel unwelcome in the UK.
3C leave is automatically granted to people when renewing visas. Once an application for visa renewal is submitted, the person’s existing rights, such as the right to rent property and work, continue until the government processes the application.
Yet the government provides no document to prove this interim status and the subsequent continuing rights attached to it. With the government currently taking one year to process applications, people applying to renew their visas are left with only an expired immigration document to evidence their rights in the UK and are consequently at the mercy of the government’s ‘hostile environment’.
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Theresa May’s ‘hostile environment’, which came into force in 2012, introduced checks to make everyday life harder for those assumed to be without immigration status, such as right to rent checks carried out by landlords and right to work checks by employers. The creation of these everyday ‘immigration officers’ has prevented those on 3C leave from accessing services they are entitled to, as they are wrongly assumed by many to be without status.
RAMFEL’s 2022 report, The Hostile Environment Remains in Place, estimated that as many as 40,000 people on 3C leave face detriment each year as a result of the government not providing proof of their status, including wrongful suspension from work, suspension of disability benefits and wrongful denial of housing.
“Preventing those with valid immigration status from accessing social housing is especially concerning, considering it is designed to allow the most vulnerable a safe and settled home”
With landlords facing significant financial penalties if renting to a person without the correct status, those unable to prove their status are likely to be considered ineligible for housing, and in some cases, evicted.
An earlier report by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants found that 42% of landlords said that the ‘right to rent’ requirements made them less likely to rent to someone without a British passport. For those on 3C leave, who hold no proof of their status, the risk of discrimination is heightened.
Preventing those with valid immigration status from accessing social housing is especially concerning, considering it is designed to allow the most vulnerable a safe and settled home. An alarming trend noted by RAMFEL is local councils refusing to offer housing to victims of domestic violence on 3C leave.
One RAMFEL client, who was effectively imprisoned in a garage by her husband and forced to birth her two children there, was wrongly denied housing by her local council, despite having 3C leave and showing the government email confirming receipt of her application. She was informed the email was not ‘proof of immigration status’ and told to return when she had a ‘valid’ immigration document.
Similarly, a client who was hospitalised due to the severity of abuse suffered had her housing benefit wrongly stopped by the local council while she was on 3C leave. The housing benefit was paying directly for her space in a refuge, after she had fled the marital home. She was threatened with eviction, due to her benefits being wrongly stopped and inability to otherwise pay her rent.
“To be informed that they were to be evicted from the safe spaces they had fled to because they were wrongly deemed to lack immigration status was shameful, and but for our interventions both may have ended up on the streets”
In these cases, the threats of evictions caused unimaginable stress for our clients, who were recovering from domestic abuse and trying to start rebuilding their lives. To be informed that they were to be evicted from the safe spaces they had fled to because they were wrongly deemed to lack immigration status was shameful, and but for our interventions both may have ended up on the streets.
These are not isolated incidents, and with the government unwilling to take corrective action, we have been left no option but to issue legal proceedings challenging their failure to protect those on 3C leave. The government simply providing confirmation of a person’s rights and entitlements while on 3C leave would greatly reduce the discrimination suffered, yet instead of implementing this simple change, as recommended in our report 18 months ago, they are spending public money defending their position in court.
The High Court will hear our case on 19-20 March 2024. It will consider whether the government’s inaction is routinely seeing those on 3C leave wrongly targeted and trapped by the same framework that led to the Windrush scandal.
Judging by their determination to fight this in court, it seems that all those promises that lessons would be learned from that scandal were entirely hollow and the government’s focus remains instead making the UK as unwelcoming as possible for migrants irrespective of whether they hold a visa or not.
Jasmine Akhurst, immigration advisor, Refugee and Migrant Forum of Essex and London
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