Open%20borders%20The%20case%20against%20immigration%20controls%20-%20Teresa%20Hayter

106 Open Borders
cations or after refusals. In Britain they are not allowed to work for the first
six months after they have arrived. After that they can, in theory and if
someone tells them about it, apply to the Home Office for permission to work.
If their application for asylum has not yet been decided, the Home Office will
normally, but not always, give permission and issue them with a document,
a standard acknowledgement letter (SAL) which may enable them to get a
National Insurance number and employers to employ them without falling
foul of the employers’ liability provision in the 1996 Act. On the other hand,
because of delays and inefficiency, some asylum seekers have to wait more
than six months before receiving an initial interview with the Home Office
and being issued with SAL. Others are in detention and remain there until
after their applications are turned down. And if, when their six months is up,
refusal is imminent, the Home Office may not issue an SAL. The asylum
seeker will then never be able to get a National Insurance number. After a
refusal, the SAL and permission to work are withdrawn, or not granted, and
it becomes unlawful for an employer to employ the asylum seeker (even
though he or she may be legally in the country, waiting for an appeal). If an
asylum seeker already has a National Insurance number, he or she may be
able to continue to work, though without permission, since employers who
can prove they have seen such a document are immune from prosecution.
But if asylum seekers do work without permission they may increase their
vulnerability to deportation and exploitation by employers.
In Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland and
Denmark, asylum seekers are compulsorily housed in reception centres,
where they are vulnerable to racist attacks, the most notorious of which have
been the firebombing of refugee hostels by the extreme right in Germany.
Britain is moving in this direction, with the opening of Oakington (see
p. 122). The provision of welfare benefits to asylum seekers is being eroded.
In Germany all state benefits are paid in kind, with a small cash allowance.
In the Netherlands asylum seekers who have their claims turned down are
to be deprived of benefits altogether, presumably in the hope of more or less
literally starving them out. In Britain asylum seekers were until 1996
entitled to 90 per cent of normal benefits. In 1996 the Conservative
government introduced new regulations, entitled Social Security (Persons
from Abroad) Miscellaneous Amendment Regulations 1996, to deny benefits
to asylum seekers who did not claim asylum before entry and to all asylum
seekers once they had had a first refusal from the Home Office. A young
Zairean woman went to court to challenge the new regulations, and won.
One of the two appeal judges, Lord Justice Simon Brown, said the following:
Parliament cannot have intended a significant number of genuine asylum-seekers to
be impaled on the horns of so intolerable a dilemma: the need either to abandon their
claims to refugee status, or to maintain them as best they can but in a state of utter
destitution. Primary legislation alone could, in my judgement, achieve that sorry state