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Government right to consider amnesty for illegal workers

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14 June 2006

The Government is right to consider allowing almost half a million people who are currently living illegally in the UK to stay in Britain and pay taxes, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr). Yesterday the Immigration Minister Liam Byrne was asked at the Commons Home Affairs Committee whether he was ruling out an amnesty, and replied: "It's too early to tell. I'm one of these people who has to have the analysis in front of them."

An ippr report lays out the analysis that shows deporting hundreds of thousands of irregular migrants, particularly those who have been in the UK for many years, is simply not feasible or desirable. The report calculates that the forced deportation of all irregular migrants could cost the tax payer around £4.7billion, while regularising work status could net the Treasury around £1billion a year.

ippr argues that with ID cards and tighter border controls becoming a reality, regularisation would be timely and effective. ippr recommends:

irregular migrants who are already in the UK should be eligible to apply for temporary work permits and issued with an ID card
those who show they have been working and contributing to the UK would be issued with 3 year temporary work permits, and their families will be allowed to remain with them
these permits could be renewed under the new points-based system, with extra points awarded to those who can show they have been in the UK for a long period
there would be a requirement to learn English for renewal of the permit
no one convicted of an offence would be eligible.

Danny Sriskandarajah, ippr associate director, said:

“All the evidence suggests that an amnesty would be the economically sensible policy to deal with illegal workers. We are not going to be able to deport hundreds of thousands of people from the UK. Our economy would shrink and we would notice it straightaway in uncleaned offices, dirty streets and unstaffed pubs and clubs. The Government is right to be considering this move and should not be scared to get involved in a public debate.”

Irregular Migration in the UK: an ippr factfile is available from www.ippr.org/publicationsandreports

Notes to Editors

Ten facts about irregular migration:

The scale of irregular migration can only be roughly estimated. The Home Office’s median estimate is 430,000 but they say the figure could be as high as 570,000 or low as 310,000. Their estimate is based on subtracting an estimate of the ‘legal’ foreign-born population from the total foreign born population recorded in the census;
Irregular migrants are people who are liable to be deported for issues related to immigration status. This includes people who entered by avoiding immigration inspection (often with the assistance of smugglers), who entered using false documents, who destroyed their passport or had it taken by an employer, who overstayed their visas or have otherwise violated their visa conditions (including students who work more than is allowed), who applied for asylum elsewhere or had their claim for asylum in the UK rejected;
The National Audit Office has estimated the cost of forcibly deporting an irregular migrant at £11,000 so it could cost up to £4.7billion to deport all those currently in Britain;
If irregular migrants were allowed to work legally, the potential taxes they would paid could be as high as £1billion per annum;
There is very little publicly available data about how migrants enter the UK, but it is likely that more overstay their visa than enter clandestinely;
Most irregular migrants will come from outside the European Union (EU) because EU nationals generally enjoy comprehensive entitlements to visit, live in and work in the UK;
Irregular migrants are thought to work in sectors that pay low wages and have high unmet demand for workers;
Policy options for managing irregular migration include better border controls, improved internal controls (like ID cards), increased opportunities for regular migration, clamping down on the informal economy, employer sanctions, removals, voluntary return and regularisation;
The USA has attempted to improve border controls but with only limited success, especially at the US-Mexico border. Employer sanctions and regularisation have also featured in the US strategy; and
In 2005, Spain completed a large-scale regularisation programme. Several other Southern European countries (including Spain) have carried out regularisation in the past.

ippr’s analysis assumes that irregular migrants earn the same as the median wage of recently-arrived immigrants (£308 per week), which means a tax contribution of £4791 per worker per year. Multiplying this by the estimated number of workers amongst the Home Office's median estimate of 430,000 irregular migrants means £1,038 billion per year in potential fiscal revenue. The Treasury’s Tax Ready Reckoner shows the cost of abolishing the starting rate of stamp duty or increase the Child Tax Credit by £150 is around £1billion.

Contact:

Richard Darlington, ippr media manager, 020 7470 6177 / 07738 320 645 / r.darlington@ippr.org
Matt Jackson, ippr senior media officer, 020 7339 0007 / 07753 719 289 / m.jackson@ippr.org