Asylum-seeking women forced to sell sex to survive - is there a way to tackle this but still keep the work ban to discourage more immigration?

[AliasGrace47]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/may/07/work-ban-forcing-uk-female-asylum-seekers-into-sex-work

What's this about low skilled? There are qualified doctors, dentists, nurses, engineers, teachers, lecturers, accountants, construction workers, craftspeople all stuck unable to work.

And if the wages earned in a minimum wage job would not be worth it, then we really can't expect anyone in the country to work for so little.

The figure is for those who have been processed and comes from government data.

@LivingDeadGirlUK

The overall asylum grant rate for small boat arrivals between 2018 and March 2024 is 72%, but there is a high number of withdrawals and if those are factored in then only 56% of cases with an outcome received a grant.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/irregular-migration-to-the-uk-year-ending-march-2024/irregular-migration-to-the-uk-year-ending-march-2024

I thought most of the migrants are Albanian economic migrants? Looks like I was misinformed?

Would you be happy with being seen by a doctor, dentist or driving over a bridge built by an engineer where we haven’t yet even been able to establish if they can stay in the country, let alone whether their qualifications are suitable to allow them to practice?

At a minimum nearly all overseas trained dentists (unless from the EU) need to pass the ORE before they can work as a dentist. The two exams together cost about £5,000 and usually take a couple of years to complete. That’s totally feasible for an asylum seeker…

ok, but someone who trained as a doctor overseas is probably going to make an excellent care-worker in the UK while they get their UK qualifications sorted.

what @very means is that asylum seekers have lots of great skills. they may not have the right paperwork, but they should be able to use at least some of their skills and hard work to pay taxes etc in the UK while waiting on their paperwork.

That was true in 2022. Now it's Afghanistan, Syrian, Iran Vietnam and Eritrea.

Care home workers need (rightly) enhanced DBS checks.

How do you propose completing an enhanced DBS on someone who doesn’t have enough paperwork to complete a criminal history check and comes from a country with (likely) shaky public administration?

But the flipside is that the men are perhaps more likely to contribute to the economy faster, especially if a high proportion of the women come from cultures where women don't usually work.

Allow them to work. And on a wider societal level, make it unacceptable/criminal for men to buy sex. (I can dream!)

Yeah but its funny how we were able to work around this and put the right training and checks in place in the past, when we were poaching medical staff and other trained professionals from our former colonies.

Give them more money, process them more quickly, deal more strictly with spurious cases.

The whole system abuses women and girls. Look at how they are often treated on the journey to the UK.

We’re enabling profits to criminals by keeping the system as it is.

Yes, because applicants were in possession of the correct identity documents and qualification evidence.

The experience of Germany, Ireland & the UK is that the majority of asylum seekers arrive with no identity documents, particularly those arriving on small boats.

Ah right. A lot of these people could probs contribute, many fleeing persecution or tyranny or just grinding poverty. But we obvs can't take them all. The added issue is that terrorists in Afghanistan & Syria make it a risk to take anyone, so putting the law abiding majority of refugees in a position where we can't really take them. The situation in Syria has resolved now somewhat though, hasn't it? So much suffering in the world, ☹️but we have to put our safety first.

Do they have none? Why don't they bring them?

I don't think Algeria is at war currently.

Well, apparently some destroy them so it's harder to send them back. I don't know if this happens as much as some people say but there have been cases of migrants attending schools and later having been found to be 30yo.

Let immigrants work, but not to send money back to people-smugglers or drug-gangs, but to be held in a personal assets holding account by the state, with only small amounts released, against the cost they have caused. e.g. Translators, lawyers, court time, tax-funded charities and quangos, housing costs, 'pocket money', dentistry and health care, education for themselves or children, prison at a thousand pounds a week, deportation costs (though court records show people simply pop back, often within days)

If people, immigrants or not, are working for pay or for the benefit of the community, let their contribution be registered. Unpaid carers and volunteer litter-pickers should be recognised as making a contribution to the national well-being and balance sheet.

Most people, even median or moderately high earners, are an overall burden to society, by the time they die. They think they have paid taxes long enough to offset what they take out, but they are in fact parasitic on a small proportion of extra high earners.

Let everyone have a lifetime balance of accounts: We probably won't pay our way, but we, and government, should not remain ignorant of financial reality. The false idol of GDP translates as 'the country and all citizens in maximum debt, with maximum immigration'. Meanwhile 'economic growth' translates to 'maximum landfill'.

With A.I. it should be possible for every individual to have a personal 'bill' for everything the tax-purse gives him/her, and his/her children, directly e.g. each health treatment, each processing cost for a government or local government department, and a reasonable proportioned share of the costs of each public service s/he and/or their child benefits from, e.g. street lighting, sewage, police.

P.S. The simple truth, that there is such a thing as 'full up' and such a thing as 'empty' can be comprehended by any toddler filling a bucket in the sandpit. Yet the idea of finite resources being finite is not understood by politicians and planners:
Are there swirling billions of surplus humans destroying the planet, with not enough water and food or any other resource? Whatever shall we do? Invite them all to pack into one tiny island? Encourage all females to be breeding machines?

Pretend internet does not exist, (nor Open University, nor degrees online, including free, repeat free, degrees from Stanford)? Therefore, pretend nobody of any age can learn anything except by sitting in a classroom getting talked at. Therefore, pretend all education must be expensive, full time, in special buildings, and all tax-funded?

Pretend internet does not exist, and that the only 'work' is still heavy manual labour, normally killing people before they reach 60, therefore older computer-users must be branded 'retired', and as only fit to spend the last 40 years of their lives on the tax-funded pay-for-doing-nothing scheme of being above 'working age' ? Pretend there is any such thing as 'working age'?

Pretend internet does not exist, and that the only paid work is still full- time, and still only possible at a special building? That is the only way to pretend that every computer-user of any age must be full-time 'unemployed, if they cannot attend a work-place 9-5, five days a week, due to personal circumstances, or health, or the health of someone they are caring for.

Not that easy. My 35 year old daughter recently lost her job due to cuts. It’s been VERY difficult to find another one.

Exactly. Thank you for answering. But (just as with with the fantasy 'people can change sex' ,) the fantasy must be challenged with fact, or nothing will change.

No, UK does not 'need' extra labour, nor extra 'students', when millions are unemployed, millions are homeless, and even more are 'hidden homeless'.

No. immigrants plus relatives are not a financial gain to UK. No, they are not a new type of human who never get old, or ill, or break the law at huge cost to UK.

And no, UK does not 'need' imported population (or any extra population) to 'support pensioners', 'support the sick', 'support the young' (all of whom are, absurdly, presumed incapable of using a home laptop to work from home, even part-time).

Virtually nobody needs to be given the label of full time learner, full time sick, or full time 'retired'.

The great problem is, the continued worship of a pretence that nothing has changed in a hundred years, that there is no such thing as climate emergency nor of population explosion, and that the 'smoke and mirrors' tricks of manipulating what is called 'the economy' and 'GDP' are acceptable:

GDP increases by two things: Maximum debt, (personal and national), and increased immigration.

'Growing the economy' means ' maximising landfill, waste, and pollution' .

Would it change the situation, if immigrants had a personal cost-sheet, (which we all could have) but unlike the rest of us, they could have most of their income confiscated by the state and held in their names, until such time as they prove they and any relatives have permanently left U.K., and/or can buy insurance that they and any member of their families will never be a financial burden?

That would only assist with 'official' work, which your daughter was competing for.

There is no apparent government interest in curbing the 'unofficial' workforce involved with drug dealing and people-importing.

"they are in fact parasitic on a small proportion of extra high earners."

"Parasitic" is a very emotive word but, if you want to use it, it is arguable that there is leeching in the opposite direction.

Tax-rates for top earners have dropped so dramatically that even billionaires are asking to pay more tax.

Why Now Is The Time To Tax The Super-rich Globally
10 Feb 2025

"In G20 countries, top income tax rates on the richest earners have fallen roughly by a third, and less than eight cents in every dollar of tax revenue now comes from taxes on wealth.

We were promised that lowering taxes on the richest would lead to economic growth, more jobs and investments. Instead, 50 years of tax cuts for the rich across 18 countries[1] have shown only one clear outcome: they have made the rich even richer.

This is why a new global consensus is emerging — one that finally recognises that inequality has reached dangerous levels, that it threatens economic growth and political stability, worsens the climate crisis, and breaks the social contract. More and more, taxing the super-rich is seen as an obvious solution to start undoing the damage caused by decades of unfair tax policies.

In 2023, close to 300 prominent economists, millionaires and politicians implored the G20 to tax the super-rich[3], and polling suggests that most people — even millionaires themselves[4] — want higher taxes on the richest. This past July, 19 former heads of state and government of G20 and higher-income countries published an open letter[5] calling on current G20 leaders to support a “new global deal to tax the world’s ultra-rich individuals”. They also noted that taxes on the rich “would reduce inequality and raise trillions of dollars necessary for investments in industrial policy and a just transition.

As calls to tax the rich grow louder, political momentum to make it a reality is also gaining strength. In July, the G20 finance ministers of the biggest economies in the world issued an historic declaration[6] committing to “engage cooperatively to ensure that ultra-high-net-worth individuals are effectively taxed,” and warning that “wealth and income inequalities are undermining economic growth and social cohesion and aggravating social vulnerabilities”."

Full article:
https://www.ifcreview.com/articles/2025/february/why-now-is-the-time-to-tax-the-super-rich-globally/

The top rate of income tax in the UK is 45% per £. But the average actual rate paid by the very rich is more like 35% per £
https://www.lse.ac.uk/research/research-for-the-world/economics/how-much-tax-do-the-rich-really-pay

The very rich can pay more of they choose by structuring their income accordingly. Alternatively they may wish to pay their workers more. That will result in more tax being paid to the Exchequer as ordinary people don't generally try to avoid tax.

I'm sure they'd love to help, but they have so many other things they have to do..

That’s terrible.