Healthcare workers among thousands wrongly stripped of work and benefits while waiting on visas, High Court hears [Video]

Healthcare workers and severely disabled people are among thousands being wrongly stripped of work and benefits, forcing them to use food banks and borrow money to power critical medical equipment because the Home Office refuses to provide them with documents to prove their legal status, a court has heard.

In a scandal with echoes of Windrush, where hundreds of Caribbean immigrants working and living in the UK were wrongly targeted by immigration enforcement, High Court lawyers have argued that thousands of people have become “the unintended victims of the hostile environment because they do not have a documentary form of their lawful immigration status”.

The claim came to light in a court case where lawyers for a charity are trying to force the Home Office to provide the documentation needed for claimants, including the severely disabled, to show that they are in Britain legally to receive benefits and to work.

Foreign nationals …