YMCA and Home Office to make failed asylum seekers work for their homes

The Home Office and the YMCA are finalising the project, working with 40 failed asylum seekers.

The project follows last year’s Asylum and Immigration Act, which said people whose claims for asylum had been rejected but could not yet return home should work for accommodation and subsistence wages from the state.

Reasons they cannot go home include waiting for a new passport or difficulty in finding safe passage to countries such as Iraq.

The failed asylum seekers in the pilot will do community work, such as gardening, interpreting or working in a Citizens Advice bureau, for up to 35 hours a week.

A start date for the scheme has not yet been set. A spokesman for the Home Office refused to say how much funding it would get, but confirmed it would be funded by the Home Office, not councils.

The failed asylum seekers all get “hard case support” under section four of the act – accommodation and an average allowance of £39 a week – in exchange for agreeing to be deported at any time.

The scheme is likely to be piloted in London, Birmingham, Manchester or Liverpool.

We wish the voluntary sector had not embarked on this very controversial step

Vaughan Jones, Praxis

The initiative has been criticised by other charities. Vaughan Jones, director of Praxis, a charity for refugees and migrants, said:

“We would have wished that the voluntary sector had not embarked on this very controversial step. It undermines the principle of volunteering, which is critical to the sector.”

A spokesman for YMCA said: “YMCA England is naturally concerned about any objections to our involvement in the pilot.

We are speaking to other voluntary groups in this area and are confident we have been able to present our position on the pilot’s benefits and address concerns.”

A Home Office spokesman said: “The home secretary’s view is it is only fair that asylum seekers being supported by the taxpayer should be giving something back to the community that supports them.”