Campaigning
Campaigning
We’ve always campaigned alongside individual members who are facing an injustice, whether that’s an unfair rejection by the Home Office, an undeserved eviction, or instances of hate crime or racism. Through this work, many of our members have got the justice they deserve.
More recently, we’ve developed bigger campaigns with the goal of policy reform. We take on campaigns where we see the greatest injustice and where the issue aligns with our strategic priorities.
These campaigns start from those who are affected and they remain at the centre throughout – it’s their voices you will hear. Whether it’s media coverage, meetings with MPs, demonstrations, lobbying, or speaking up at political and public events, we work alongside those affected and with other partners to achieve our joint goals.
Together with migrants directly affected, Migrant Voice has been campaigning against extortionate visa costs and long settlement routes since 2020.
The visa costs migrants must pay to remain in this country are extortionate, at more than £3,600 per person every 2.5 years. Many families are forced into poverty and debt to pay for the costs. These are among the highest in the world, yet are not really known to the wider public.
Migrants who want to settle in the UK must live here for at least 5 years before they can apply for permanent residence, but many are placed on the longer “10-year route”, doubling the costs and putting them in positions of far greater uncertainty and vulnerability.
The current visa and settlement system affects every aspect of people’s lives, from mental and physical health, work, relationships, to their children’s life chances. It leaves people impoverished, and prices them out of their rights. Yet visa fees are set at 7-10 times the actual processing costs. This is why we need action on visas now.
We have been raising the issue with the public, whether engaging with the public, like during our Day of Action, in the media, and with policy makers through briefings, questions in parliament, debates and reports. Our campaign is national, with our London work funded by the Trust for London and contributions from our core funders.
If you are affected by high visa fees and would like to share your experience or would like to join the campaign, email us at [email protected].
Migrant Voice’s #MyFutureBack campaign has helped many international students clear their names from Home Office accusations of cheating in an English-language test.
Since 2017 we’ve been campaigning alongside hundreds of international students to seek justice. The students are among those who in 2014 were wrongly accused by the Home Office of cheating on an English language test required for their visa renewal. They are just a small number of the 56,000 who were affected and had their visas revoked and lives destroyed.
As a result of the campaign, the issue has been shared widely across the media, with more than 100 affected students speaking out and telling their stories. Notable among these are in-depth investigations by BBC Newsnight in 2022 and The Guardian in 2024
In 2019, our work together on the My Future Back campaign resulted in damning reports by the National Audit Office, the Public Accounts Committee, and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on TOEIC (of which Migrant Voice was then the Secretariat).
As a result, many students are now winning their cases and getting leave to remain in the UK. But the work is not finished. Former Home Secretary Sajid Javid admitted that the Government has a “duty” to do more to help those students who were innocent. We and the students will not stop campaigning until the Government has fulfilled that duty - until there is a political solution that allows them to clear their names and get their futures back.
EU Settlement Scheme
Since the 2016 EU Referendum, we’ve been working alongside our members and other organisations to fight for the rights of EU nationals in the UK after Brexit. We’ve raised their voices in the media and, through our position on the EU Settlement Scheme Home Office working group, taken their experiences directly to the decision-makers.
In 2019, hundreds of EU nationals responded to our survey on the EU Settlement Scheme. The resulting report, which exposed a number of very concerning problems with the scheme, was sent to every MP in the new Parliament and resulted in several meetings with MPs and Parliamentary questions.
Undocumented migrants
We have always worked with undocumented migrants to get their stories into the media and raise awareness about the reality of their lives. We run training and activities for this group of migrants to ensure they are heard and part of the conversation about their future in the UK.
We are an active partner in the Status Now 4 All campaign, calling for regularisation for all undocumented migrants currently in the UK and Ireland.