U.K. Told Immigrants 'Go Home,' But Now It Needs Them

Please don’t forget what we do for you when the pandemic is over. Such is the message of a video released in the U.K. last week that features essential health workers from migration backgrounds on the front lines of the fight against Covid-19. The video, trending on social media with the hashtag #YouClapForMeNow, begins by borrowing anti-immigrant rhetoric to make a point about the virus: “Something’s come from overseas, and taken your jobs, made it unsafe to walk the streets.”

The video is a nod to the higher proportion of black, Asian and minority ethnic people, known as BAME in Britain, in medical and other service roles. The group makes up about 20% of the National Health Service staff (compared with about 14% of the total U.K. workforce) and accounts for more than half of its Covid-19 casualties to date. They are understandably wary of the conflict between their status as national heroes, and the reality of their wider treatment as a minority by the U.K. government. In recent years, immigrant deportation policies have pushed thousands of people out of the U.K., health-care workers among them. Now, with the coronavirus overwhelming hospitals, the U.K. is asking people from the same groups whose lives have been made difficult by the policies to return and help.