Archive for month: October, 2020

Early on in the pandemic, dozens of migrant rights charities and church leaders wrote to the prime minister calling for temporary leave to remain to be granted to all migrants and asylum seekers, to prevent exploitation, destitution and homelessness and to ensure universal access to benefits, public services and medical care. The government always claimed that the point of hostile environment policies was to make undocumented migrants leave the country, by making it impossible for them to live here. Obviously this logic could not apply when borders are closed. But the punitive policies continued. The government refused to grant any form of leave, and refused to suspend hostile environment policies – meaning that exclusion from subsistence benefits, sanctions for landlords letting to undocumented migrants, for those employing migrants and asylum seekers not permitted to work, and criminalisation of the workers themselves, as well as charges for medical treatment (with the exception of testing and treatment for coronavirus), all remain in place.  The government knows that the effect of these policies is to make life intolerable for those subjected to them – that is their purpose. This is a violation of rights to health, to physical and psychological integrity, to livelihood, to housing, and constitutes inhuman and degrading treatment.

The work done by undocumented migrants is nearly always manual. It can’t be performed remotely. It is almost always exploitative, frequently paying below the minimum wage. There is no statutory sick pay for those falling ill, no tax credits, no furlough or self-isolation allowance for those told to stay at home.

Being undocumented during the pandemic

A June 2020 report by RAPAR and Kanlungan Filipino Consortium, A chance to feel safe: precarious Filipino migrants amid the UK’s coronavirus outbreak, points out that the official reports all omit the undocumented migrant workers, many of whom work in social care and domestic work, in close physical contact with others, but invisible, and unable to benefit from any of the measures put into place to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. None could work from home. Respondents to their survey, mostly undocumented middle-aged Filipina women living in the UK for ten years on average, had an average wage of £6 per hour (the minimum wage in London is £8.72 and the London Living Wage £10.75). Some earned less than £2 per hour, working 16-hour days in private homes. Their undocumented status prevented them negotiating better pay or conditions.

The pandemic has had catastrophic effects. More than half of the respondents had lost all work and all income, and were relying on informal loans and charity. As three-quarters had no formal tenancy agreement, they could not benefit from the government-imposed ban on evictions. Remittances home – after rent, the main priority – had become impossible, and awareness of the hardships this caused family back home was a source of huge distress. Those who still had work could not afford to stop, even if they had Covid symptoms.

The stresses of being undocumented and the fear of discovery, and the added stresses of unemployment or overwork, no or scant income, debt, homelessness or the fear of it, and the inability to support family, exact a toll on mental as well as physical health.

A filipina woman, undocumented, (6 years in the UK) testify : 

I’m a live-out domestic worker. I worked for three employers before the lockdown. One was a doctor. I cleaned his house. He was very sick and hadn’t been to work for long time … I started feeling unwell. I lost my appetite, had low fever and body ache and coughed a lot. These are symptoms of Covid-19. I was so scared. Because I’m undocumented, I have never registered GP. I can’t go to hospital. For a month, I was unwell. I took care of myself. I lost all my jobs, I don’t have any income. My family asked, ‘when are you going to send money?’ I said, ‘I can’t. I don’t have jobs now.’ I feel very stressed. I don’t know when I will have my jobs back. I started looking for new jobs. Last week I had an interview. They said they could offer me a live-in job, but the conditions are so hard. … I won’t be allowed to go out at all before September. It is too hard. I feel like I’m in jail. I didn’t accept the job offer. The stress has made my asthma even worse. I can’t get any help from doctors because I’m hidden. I’m staying with my friend. There is no internet in the house. I feel very I can’t even talk with my family and friends online.

Migration is not a crime. Nevertheless, the detention of undocumented migrants and out-of- procedure refugees had become commonplace in the Netherlands – as it has in other EU countries. Immigration detention has a deep negative effect on individuals and families. It has a profound impact on the physical and mental health on the detained and on their relatives and friends outside. The most experienced mental health problems are depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the longer the detention continues, the longer lasting the implications will be. The regular use of isolation and solitary confinement is a serious risk factor for long lasting mental health damage, so is the use of segregation units.

Testimony of Kofi, migrant in the Netherland:

Furthermore, next to the direct impact on mental and physical well being, detention is often associated with the additional stigma and narrative of being “criminal” – both by those who experience unjust detention and in the public perception.

In case of children in detention: in principle that is not allowed in the Netherlands. For the purpose of deportation, children and their family are detained in so called “closed family facilities”. Families have their own living units, where they can cook for themselves and there are activities for the children. However – there is a closed fence around the facility. The families are often moved to other facilities, there is no privacy and there are hardly any care to deal with the traumatic experiences.

Deportations occurs early in the morning, what is particularly for the children extremely stressful and traumatic: they are lying awake in anticipation will this be the day that they will be deported. And every day they are missing friends that were deported in the morning.

Migrant women organisations and women’s rights organisations are applying CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women) concerns about access to healthcare for undocumented women.

As Sara, a migrant woman in The Netherlands, comments:

“Migrant (undocumented) women and healthcare professionals still lack knowledge on the right to health of women and the existing regulations. As a consequence, undocumented migrant women often achieve access to the healthcare system when it is too late –symptoms got worse, their cancer is too advanced. The continuity of needed care is seldom or not guaranteed, and sometimes they are denied any care at all.

In practice, undocumented migrant women are often dependant on NGO’s that act as intermediaries between undocumented migrants and the healthcare system”.

Women Migrant Workers

The vast majority of undocumented women – migrants as well as refugees – find employment mainly as workers in the private household – either as live-in or live-out workers – including those who are working in the homes of diplomats or as au-pair – or in hotels and catering industries. Most of them came legally to the Netherlands – with a temporary work permit, through family reunification or with a tourist visa. They were forced to become “over-stayers” and therefore undocumented when their visa for various reasons expired. Likewise, women who are refused asylum, also became undocumented.

While there are employers who uphold treatment of workers according to their human rights as workers and as women, however this depends on the “goodwill” of the employer. Because of the undocumented status of the worker, the relationship is a very unequal power relationship, constantly under threat of reporting to the police or immigration authorities. This relation frequently also leads to other forms of exploitation and violation of rights.

Associations of migrant domestic workers such as IMWU, RESPECT Network or TRUSTED as well as researches and shadow reports to CEDAW their exploitation have been extensively documented – in terms of wages (underpay and overwork); on-call work when live-in, multiple tasking (child minding, or elderly care work, cooking, house-cleaning, laundry, gardening, shopping), unsafe and unhealthy labour conditions, without personal protective equipment (PPE) and experiences of gender based harassment and violence on the work floor. The work done is precarious work – very often without any agreed contract or the working relationship can be unilaterally ended by the employer – either because of change of circumstances – transferring to another city or country, illness, loss of employment or other unexplained reasons on the side of the employer.

We will discuss about the right and access to health and other issues concerning the rights of refugees and migrant people in the EU from the 23^rd to the 25^th of October in the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) Berlin Hearing. Organized by activists, health, human rights and migrant organizations, we strongly denounce the violations refugees and migrant people experience in the context of the European asylum policies.  Especially in the light of recent events and political decisions in the EU it is more important than ever to make sure voices and testimonies are heard. All information here.