DEFEND MIGRANTS. DEFEND OUR COMMUNITIES.
The UK government, through Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, has announced sweeping changes to the immigration and asylum systems. These include, among other measures: an extension of the wait time for settlement from five years to up to twenty years; the review of refugee status every 2.5 years with the possibility of return if a “home country becomes safe”; the ending of automatic rights to housing and financial support for asylum seekers; tighter restrictions on family reunion and increased surveillance and removal of assets for those in the system.
For Filipino migrants in the UK, this is yet another blow in a hostile environment that already forces many into fear, precarity and invisibility. Many of our community members work as carers, domestic workers, nurses, hospitality and transport staff. Despite the vital work they do, they face insecure status, family separation, wage exploitation and little protection.
At Kanlungan we have stood with the Filipino migrant community for over two decades. For example:
- Providing immigration advice and sign-posting to legal support for Filipino and other East and Southeast Asian migrants.
- Running welfare support and small grants during the cost-of-living crisis and pandemic, including helping women fleeing abusive domestic worker situations get safe refuge and funding to move into independent living.
- Holding workshops and webinars on financial resilience, mental health, employment rights and migration status for Filipino migrant women, and creating spaces of community-meeting and peer support.
- Acting as a referral point for women domestic workers experiencing trafficking and exploitation
Because of that work we know that when rights are removed, it doesn’t just affect one person – it affects families, communities, the friends we rely on, the networks we build. These government changes aim to deepen the hostile environment; they make legal status more fragile, reduce the pathways to permanence, make it harder to bring family, and increase fear of removal or destitution.
We must resist. We must support one another. We must defend migrants.
HOW YOU CAN TAKE ACTION
- Join the Tanggol Migrante Network (Defend Migrants Network) – a united community front for Filipino and migrant workers across the UK demanding dignity, rights, and a stop to hostile-environment policies.
- Raise your voice – share your story, attend meetings, speak out on social media, contact your MP and ask: why must people who build this country live as second-class, insecure, under threat?
- Reach out to Kanlungan – for case work or for community. If you’re a Filipino migrant facing status issues, exploitation, isolation or need legal, welfare or mental-health support – contact us. If you’re looking for community, peer-support, networks of mutual aid – come join us.
These proposals might be framed as “modernising immigration”, but what they really do is punish people who already give so much. They deepen the hostile environment. They separate families. They weaken our future.
We will not accept that. We will build our future together. We will stand in solidarity. We will fight for the right to belong.
Makibaka. Huwag matakot.
Kanlungan Filipino Consortium