The Migrant Rights Network UK has accused the British Home Office of criminalizing 65 highly skilled migrants and leaving them in legal limbo. In a new report, the highly skilled migrants are threatened with being deported, reinforcing a devastating impact on their lives.
UK Migrants in Danger
High skill migrants, even those that have stayed in the United Kingdom for years and are members of the National Health Service or NHS, are still in danger of being deported.
The UK’s new immigration system stated that it emphasizes attracting skilled migrants. But for a small group of HSMs, this does not seem to be the case.
The Home Office’s decisions have a very devastating impact say that MRN on this group of HSMs who, without any ILR, are essentially in legal limbo. This is despite having to live in the UK on work visas and being welcomed when they arrived in the country around 17 years ago.
In the next years, MRN says that these people have had children in the United Kingdom and had built a family, and some of them are now living with disabilities and are sick due to old age. All of these factors should influence the Home Office’s process for granting ILR.
HSMs, say MRB comprise health workers with the NHS biomedical scientists, accountants, factory production managers, IT consultants, and many others.
Over 90% of the migrants have studied in the United Kingdom and held a post-graduate degree, including MBAs. The HSMs without leave to remain to originate from six South Asian and African countries. These countries include Pakistan, India, and Nigeria. All of them came from Commonwealth countries.
However, these groups were targeted after April 2015 when the Home Office decided to merge its migration databases with HMRC tax collection records. That was when the highly skilled migrants were then made the target.
According to the record of MRN, 87% of this group had enlisted help from an accountant with their tax returns, and 83% of them stated that this was their first-ever tax return in the United Kingdom.
What happened was that after April 2015, the Home Office started to apply that decision of bad character or dishonesty in connection to historic self-employment tax discrepancies around 10 years ago. Anyone who had applied for a visa but had committed tax discrepancies in the past could be refused the visa or ILR because of it.
MRN’s executive report stated that the denial of ILR leaves migrants in legal limbo, and in a hostile environment, with no ability to rent, drive, work, receive NHS healthcare, receive access to public funding, or open bank accounts.
The immigration act is only allowed to remove people from the United Kingdom who have committed serious criminal offenses, like rape, terrorism, murder, or are also deemed a threat to national security. MRN stated that it is not fair to put people who may have committed a mistake on their tax return.