The Effects of UK Immigration, Asylum and Refugee Policy on Poverty
A Joint Inquiry by the APPG on Migration and the APPG on Poverty.
The All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPG) for Poverty and Migration came together to conduct an Inquiry into whether and how immigration and asylum policies are contributing to poverty in the UK.
The report summarised findings from over 200 submissions of evidence, including evidence from The Vavengers. Submissions came from experts with lived and professional experience of poverty and the UK immigration system.
Parliamentarians heard powerful evidence about the impacts that this has on individuals, families and communities. On 30th April, APPG on Migration and APPG on Poverty held a launch of this report at Portcullis House in Westminster, London. In attendance, there were APPG on Migration and APPG on Poverty members, members of the parliament, charities leading the report as well as the charities, professionals and migrants with lived experience of poverty.
Right to left: Faysal Curry and Warda Mohamed (Lasting Support Services), Baroness Mobarik (APPG on Migration Member), Sema Gornall and Salma Jafar (The Vavengers).
The main recommendations
These recommendations build on a number of shared principles and understandings, reflecting the concerns of both the APPG on Poverty and the APPG on Migration:
Government should commit to ending destitution in the UK, and destitution should be ‘designed out’ of the UK’s social security and immigration systems.48
Reducing poverty, and helping people to get out of poverty, should be a key strategic objective of policy across government.
There is a shared interest in ensuring that people who settle in the UK can thrive – a successful migration policy is one that enables people to integrate and contribute (economically and socially).
Poverty has long-term and community-wide negative impacts (including because of impacts on local government resources and wider public services), beyond immediate implications for quality of life.
Poverty, and particularly deep poverty/destitution, makes people vulnerable to exploitation and helps unscrupulous employers and businesses, as well as criminal gangs – this undermines community safety for everyone.
Policies which move and hide costs (to local government, to civil society, to communities themselves) are inefficient, and tend to obscure the real impact of decisions made by central government.
Poverty is an inhumane and ineffective tool for enforcing UK immigration policy. The evidence that poverty or destitution is an effective deterrent or incentive in influencing migration decisions is weak.