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5 ways to start repairing the damage of the Illegal Migration Act [1]
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Date: 2023-09
Since the Modern Slavery Act’s passage in 2015, successive governments have weakened its protections for survivors by changing the act’s guidelines and restricting its support.
This trend continued with the Illegal Migration Act, passed this year. Survivors of trafficking arriving irregularly to the UK are now prevented from accessing support due to their immigration status. The Nationality and Borders Act also came into force this year. This latter piece of legislation subjects victims to higher evidence thresholds much earlier in their recovery period, subjects them to criminal background checks, and restricts support for survivors of trafficking in cases where victims don’t disclose abuse ‘quickly’ enough.
We asked five people with lived experience of severe exploitation, all of whom would have faced deportation under this new legislation, what steps the UK could now take to undo the damage and begin building a system that allows survivors to recover emotionally, financially, and physically after modern slavery.
A firewall between police and immigration enforcement
Victims of crime in the UK are not guaranteed protection from immigration enforcement. These include modern slavery survivors with insecure status, who are liable to deportation.
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“While I was being exploited, I told people at my church, but they didn’t encourage me to tell the police,” Anna, a survivor of modern slavery, said. “They knew I could be deported.”
A lack of trust in authorities and the support they offer frequently prevents survivors of modern slavery from coming forward. Too often, that fear is well-founded. Research by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants found that details of 796 trafficking victims were passed to immigration enforcement in a two-year period.
Anna eventually opened up to the police, but only after she was questioned over an unrelated incident where four strangers racially assaulted her at a London train station. With an invalid visa, she spent that night in a police cell, alone, after disclosing her experiences of modern slavery.
“Victims of any crime should not be treated as ‘immigration issues,’” Anna said. “It makes the police blind to victims, because they are not looking out for the signs of vulnerability. They are searching for ‘migrants.’”
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/5-ways-to-start-repairing-the-damage-of-the-illegal-migration-act/
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