Healthcare workers 'denied work while waiting on visas'

Thousands of foreign nationals falling victim to 'hostile environment' despite having a legal right to live in the UK

- HOLLY BANCROFT

Healthcare workers and severely disabled people are among thousands being wrongly stripped of work and benefits, forcing them to use food banks and borrow money to power critical medical equipment because the Home Office refuses to provide them with documents to prove their legal status, a court has heard.

In a scandal with echoes of Windrush, where hundreds of Caribbean immigrants working and living in the UK were wrongly targeted by immigration enforcement, High Court lawyers have argued that thousands of people have become “the unintended victims of the hostile environment because they do not have a documentary form of their lawful immigration status”.

The claim came to light in a court case in which lawyers for a charity are trying to force the Home Office to provide the documentation needed for claimants, including the severely disabled, to show that they are in Britain legally in order to receive benefits and to work.

Foreign nationals on “leave to remain” have to renew their status every few years, and while they wait for a decision, they are put on “3C leave”. This is meant to protect the rights they have to work, study or claim benefits, but it leaves them without a physical document confirming their status – something many employers insist on seeing.

Although the Home Office does not publish figures for the number of people on “3C leave”, freedom of information data shows that at least 370,000 had this status in 2019. Now the High Court has heard how people on 3C leave have been stripped of their employment without notice and plunged into destitution. Others have been unable to take up university offers because they can’t get student finance, and some have had their benefits suddenly removed.