Closed petition Grant Right to Work for Asylum Seekers waiting 3+years for Home Office decision

Closed on 3 May 2017

For more than a decade, the UK’s policies to restrict asylum seekers’ rights to work in the UK have attracted criticism from NGOs, trade unions, churches and some Parliamentarians, amongst others.
Calls for change have tended to focus on:

Advantages of extending asylum seekers’ rights to work include that it would:
1. Benefit the UK economy and reduce the costs to the taxpayer of supporting asylum seekers
2. Alleviate some of the difficulties that asylum seekers can face during the asylum determination process, such as social and economic exclusion, de-skilling, low self- esteem and poor mental health, and improve asylum seekers’ integration and employment prospects in the event of a positive asylum decision
3. Reduce asylum seekers’ vulnerability to exploitation through working illegally