Any time the UK enters some form of national event, scammers don’t wait to start preying on vulnerable migrants. Migrants in the UK will either have precarious leave or no leave at all, this makes them easy targets for unscrupulous people looking to make some quick money peddling stories of Home Office amnesties, like we saw after the Windrush scandal where messages were going around for people to complete a bogus form and charge a small amount for people to be granted amnesty. These types of messages always do the rounds in migrant networks via WhatsApp or word of mouth.
In my years of working as an immigration lawyer I have received many calls from excited people about possible amnesties or quick routes to settlement and I often have to inform them that when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is! This is more so when the party to the application is the Home Office.
Along with the fake news comes a misunderstanding about real application routes and how they are applied.
Just the other day I had an excited call from someone who thought that anyone with a “no recourse to public funding” condition on their visa can now get it lifted because of Covid 19. Sadly that isn’t the case, the opportunity to remove the conditions has always been there if you meet the requirements of destitution, homelessness etc. It may be that due to Covid 19 you now meet the condition, but there is no special rule.
The news about NHS workers receiving a one year extension to their visa has also caused a great deal of talk on social media and WhatsApp, but the devil is always in the detail and in this case we haven’t been given too much in the way of detail yet. If anything, for one client, it would be better for her to apply as normal for her extension rather than get a one year extension and then next year pay, possibly, a higher application fee for an application she has to make because one year doesn’t help many people to settlement.
If you receive a message by WhatsApp or social media about immigration, feel free to run it past our expert immigration lawyer, Mohamed. Remember that a phone call is free, but taking the advice of an unknown person by WhatsApp or Facebook could be a very expensive mistake.
Call Mohamed today on 07309074667
Suleman Legal Services 