Our country is going through challenging times. We as the Asylum Seekers and Refugees in this country want to be a part of the nation’s collective efforts. Allow us to serve our new country!

Enhance Shortage Occupation List to include all COVID-19 era key jobs and give asylum seekers SOL restricted work permits from day one! Fast-track registration of refugee doctors and healthcare workers, remove the English language requirement for healthcare workers during the pandemic!

Let asylum seekers and refugee doctors and nurses contribute to the fight against Coronavirus!

Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the UK are trying to tackle their own difficulties. Under COVID-19 regulations Home Office have slowed down immigration decisions, cancelled second interviews, stopped issuing biometric residence cards even to those whose asylum, claims have been accepted by courts , stopped processing family reunion applications and accommodation offered to asylum seekers by the Home Office are a cause of concern especially nowadays.

This petition however is not about our problems as asylum seekers and refugees.

We want to be a part of the solution to the unprecedented problems the United Kingdom is having to deal with!

Allow us!

According to the current rules Home Office issues restricted work permits to asylum seekers and only to those who have been waiting for a decision for longer than 12 months from the date of their application. Even then, asylum seekers they can apply for a work permit to work in jobs included in the Shortage Occupation List only.

Shortage Occupation List is meant for usual times.

These times are anything but usual!

Our country urgently needs more doctors, more nurses, more drivers, more fruit and vegetable pickers, more supermarket assistants and more healthcare workers.

Soon we are very likely to need more workers in other areas, too!

We are calling on our government to extend the Shortage Occupation List to include all jobs deemed essential and to give all asylum seekers the right to work from day one of their asylum applications!

We are also calling on our government to adjust the requirements to practice so that doctors, nurses and other medical staff hold practicing certificates of non-European countries may be employed in the NHS’s efforts to deal with the outbreak. We asylum seeking and refugee healthcare workers want to serve our nation at its hour of need.

Currently the UK government authorised GMC (General Medical Council) to provide temporary registration or license to practice to suitable healhcare workers, but that scheme does not include asylum seekers, and the number of people registered is far below the available. 

Allowing asylum seekers to be employed in essential businesses and refugee healthcare workers to be employed by the NHS is another way of bolstering the resources necessary to overcome the pandemic.

This will ease the burden on social benefit and housing schemes as well as preventing infections in the overcrowded accommodations.

Please, help us become a part of the solution!

Please, extend the Shortage Occupation List and remove all other restrictions on the employment of asylum seeker or refugee healthcare workers!