Former Glasgow Girl Roza Salih has won agreement for the city council to support efforts to allow asylum seekers to work and get free bus travel.
It comes after a council meeting on Thursday heard that people are forced to live on £5.84 per day with the current system fuelling “mental health problems.”
Councillor Salih, a former refugee, brought a motion to council calling for the ban on work to be scrapped as she explained her own family’s experiences.
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Describing the struggles her father faced after arriving in 2002 from Iraq, she said: “My dad was told he was not able to work in this country· As a child I could see the effect on my dad’s mental health for many years as he could not be the breadwinner for his family. We received our status after eight years.”
The SNP politician who represents Greater Pollok said her father had wanted to work and contribute to society.
She said: “Today asylum seekers are living below the poverty line because they have no recourse to public funds or are able to work in this country. This is a cruel system designed to isolate and dehumanise asylum seekers as the ‘others.’ This system has created mental health problems for people who have already endured some much in their lives to seek sanctuary to find out that they are not welcome.”
Councillor Salih also warned asylum seekers are being exploited by employers because they don't have the right to work - resulting in the economy losing out.
Highlighting Canada where asylum seekers can work “immediately” she said Scotland should follow that example.” In the UK they have to wait 12 months while in Germany it is three.
Councillor Salih, who campaigned against immigration dawn rains while at Drumchapel High as one of the Glasgow Girls activists, said allowing asylum seekers to work will boost the economy and enrich society given the labour shortage.
Seconding the motion, Councillor Allan Casey, SNP, said thousands of people’s talents are being wasted and it is time to “lift the ban” on asylum seekers being allowed to work.
Bringing a Labour amendment Councillor Cecilia O’Lone said many asylum seekers have been treated as “third class citizens.”
Seconding, Councillor Keiran O’ Neill, also Labour, accused UK Conservative ministers of talking about the current crisis “as if people are choosing this.”
He said: “As if any human being anywhere on the planet would choose to go on a boat as if the boat wasn’t any safer than the land - as if they were not fleeing some of the most brutal persecution and conflict.”
He said “no recourse to public funds” is perhaps the “cruellest” and “dehumanising policy.”
Calling for asylum seekers to be given free bus travel, Councillor Anthony Carroll, Scottish Greens said a “lack of public transport as well as “financial resources” and the “denial of full labour rights are all connected to the exclusion of those seeking asylum.”
Seconded his amendment, fellow Scottish Greens councillor Christy Mearns said “many asylum seekers have “suffered immense trouble” after fleeing war and persecution and being separated from family.
She told the meeting they have struggled to come here only to “experience poor quality housing, a lack of support networks, minimal funds” and “racism and discrimination.”
The Green and Labour amendments were accepted into Councillor Salih’s motion.
The agreed motion said the council “records it support for the Scottish Government commitment to “work with third sector partners and local authorities to consider how best to provide free bus travel to asylum seekers and refugees including displaced people from Ukraine.”
SNP Councillor Angus Millar, convenor for transport is to write to the Scottish Transport secretary asking that a current pilot offering free bus travel to be expanded to all those seeking asylum.
Among other steps the motion also said the council is considering formally joining the Lift the Ban coalition, which campaigns for people seeking asylum to have the right to work.
The council chief executive is also to write to the current “Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) call for evidence 2023, noting evidence of “how migrants could benefit Glasgow’s economy and that the right to work is a fundamental human right.”
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