Legal Update: Poverty as immigration control
Kamena Dorling
Monday, June 22, 2015
Kamena Dorling, policy and programmes manager at Coram Children's Legal Centre, examines the situation of vulnerable families with "no recourse to public funds", due to their immigration status.
On 3 June, the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (Compas) at the University of Oxford published a study, Safeguarding Children From Destitution, showing that thousands of children – many of them British citizens – become trapped in poverty and vulnerability due to their parents being subject to the "no recourse to public funds" policy. No recourse to public funds (NRPF) is a condition imposed by the Home Office on many categories of individuals subject to immigration control, giving them no entitlement to welfare benefits or public housing. Those without valid leave to remain in the UK have no recourse to public funds and are also not permitted to work. When circumstances deteriorate, due to, for example, relationship breakdown, families can find themselves destitute and unable either to support themselves or to rely on benefits to assist them in rising out of poverty.
As section 17 of the Children Act 1989 requires local authorities to safeguard and promote the welfare of children "in need", within their families, including a child whose parents have 'no recourse to public funds', many end up turning to social services. The report estimated there to be 3,391 NRPF families supported under section 17, including 5,900 children. Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in the number of families with NRPF, most of who are awaiting decisions on human rights applications. Without local authority support, many would be homeless and destitute.
Financial pressure
It could be argued that local authorities have, in effect, become accommodation providers for the Home Office while it makes decisions on immigration claims, a role that many view as unwelcome and one that brings significant financial pressure on local government. Provision of support can last for years due to delays in decision making. When assessing NRPF families' eligibility for support, some authorities are placing more weight on immigration status and credibility of the parents than on the needs of the child. Negative experiences highlighted by Coram Children's Legal Centre's casework include being refused any assistance in securing support, having support withdrawn unexpectedly, and parents being threatened with the taking of their child into care. Cases have included those where a homeless mother has been forced to sleep in a bus station with her baby after being refused support, and another driven to begging and prostitution in order to provide for her children.
A hostile environment
All of the concerns raised by Compas echo those highlighted in Coram Children's Legal Centre's 2013 report Growing Up in a Hostile Environment, which emphasised the degree to which migrant children and families were being punished by increasingly restrictive measures designed to combat the perceived problem of immigration in the UK. Children without regular immigration status are often unable to access appropriate education, healthcare and support, and many face extreme poverty. At the same time, they are often unable to either return to their (or their parents') country of origin, or to take the necessary steps to regularise their status, even when they have strong claims for remaining in the UK. The Compas study highlights that in fact the vast majority of families are eventually found to be entitled to remain in the UK, but without legal aid for quality legal representation, the path to securing status can be long and hard.
It can be argued that the programme of developing a hostile environment for migrants has resulted in child poverty being used as a form of immigration control. Certainly it has led to a shifting of responsibility and cost onto local authorities, who for many migrants are the last resort when destitute and desperate.
The development of a more effective immigration system should include empowering those who have a legal right to remain in the UK with the means to regularise their status and have their claims fairly heard, rather than simply focusing on harsher measures to make their existence impossible. As can be seen, the latter serves only to endanger children's welfare.
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Legal Update is produced in association with experts at Coram Children’s Legal Centre ?www.childrenslegalcentre.com
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