Almost 100,000 asylum seekers have been granted the right to work in the UK despite a decision on their claims not being reached due to a Home Office backlog.
The number of people who have been waiting for an initial decision on their claims for more than a year by the end of June 2023 was 91,000, an almost 80 percent increase from this time last year, according to the latest data.
Those living in migrant hotels who have been waiting for a decision to be made for longer than a year through no fault of their own are given a work permit under UK immigration rules and can apply for any job on the country’s shortage occupation list.
Hussein, 34, who lived in a Staffordshire hotel after he left Iraq over fears that work he had done for Western militaries was putting him and his family in danger, was granted a permit in October and is now working full-time for a charity.
He has been waiting for a decision on his claim since he arrived in the UK by small boat in July 2022 and says the £9 per week given to asylum seekers by the UK Government is not enough to live on.
He told Sky News: “We are getting very, very little money as financial support.
“In the end as a human being, as a person life is not only sleeping and eating – you might need clothes, you might need shoes, you might need maybe if you have some habits like smoking or anything, so all of this needs money.”
Hussein says he wants to help support his nine-year-old daughter back home once he starts earning a full-time salary.
He believes other men living in the hotel with him have been given hope by seeing him working a full-time job.
He added: “Everybody who is seeing me in the hotel, they are also excited because of my job.
“They are seeing what I’m doing and they want to be the same way.”
Another asylum seeker who spoke to Sky News, Khalid, 30, from Syria, said he had been waiting for a decision on his application for 14 months, now his permit has arrived he says he is prepared to do any job as he does not wish to live at the expense of the taxpayer.
He said: “This is the wrong from the Government, not from me. I didn’t choose to come and stay in a hotel.
“Once I start work, I will not stay in the hotel, I can buy, rent or do something, from my business, from my job.”
