Over 300 charities and voluntary organisations have signed a letter to the home secretary, saying they will refuse to comply with her “immoral and impractical” proposal to introduce a volunteering “test” for migrants applying for indefinite leave to remain in the UK.
Shabana Mahmood announced the plans in a speech at the Labour Party conference in September, with the government set to share a consultation on proposals for a “contribution-based model” to reduce net migration by the end of the year.
At the conference, she said: “I’ll be proposing a series of new tests, such as: being in work; making national insurance contributions; not taking a penny in benefits; learning English to a high standard; having no criminal record; and finally, that you have truly given back to your community, such as by volunteering your time to a local cause.”
Now, a new open letter sent to Mahmood, coordinated by organisations including Asylum Matters, Focus on Labour Exploitation and Praxis, calls the proposals “an exploitation of volunteering that we cannot accept”.
“Effectively making volunteering compulsory undermines its many benefits, and would create a population of people forced to work for free, under threat of having their lives in this country ripped away from them,” it reads.
“As organisations that work with hundreds of thousands of volunteers every year, we tell you now: we won’t work with coerced volunteers. We won’t report to the Home Office on the time people give freely, to us and to their communities. We won’t allow our volunteers’ valuable work to be used against other migrants and racialised people who aren’t able to volunteer.”
It urges the government to scrap any proposals to tie volunteering to immigration status and consult with charities before floating any plans relating to volunteering.
Charities ‘won’t accept’ proposal
Louise Calvey, director of Asylum Matters, which coordinated the letter, said: “It should be very clear to the home secretary that organisations across the voluntary sector, the people who would have to enforce this unworkable policy, won’t accept it.
“This is a nonsensical plan that undermines the principle of volunteering and ignores and undermines the immense contribution already made to the voluntary sector by migrants, particularly by people seeking asylum who do a huge amount of unpaid work while they’re banned from regular employment.”
Leigh Brimicombe, chief influencing officer at NCVO, said: “Giving your time to support the people and causes that matter to you, out of your own free will, is what makes volunteering so special.
“The idea of mandating volunteering as a condition for those seeking indefinite leave to remain fundamentally undermines the idea of volunteering.
“It’s important the government works with charities, and not does to them, so that policy can better encourage the pipeline of volunteers charities need to continue delivering their vital work.”
In response to the letter, a Home Office spokesperson said: “We’ll always welcome those who make a positive contribution to our country, because settlement in the UK has long been seen as a privilege rather than a right.
“While the standard period migrants must spend here before qualifying for settlement will rise from five to 10 years, individuals may shorten this through contributions to our economy and society.
“No final decisions have been made on which types of contributions will qualify for a reduced timeframe. A consultation on settlement reform will launch later this year, with further details to follow.”
