The anonymous manuscript play Sir Thomas More (c. 1592) is often considered to be partly written by William Shakespeare, and since the manuscript contains annotations in the hand of the Master of Revels, it has also been analysed in relation to early modern censorship. In that context, Sir Thomas More has also been discussed with a focus on the xenophobic and potentially seditious sentiment expressed against French immigrants (changed to ‘Lombards’ by the censor). Less discussed, though related to these matters, is the play’s extensive preoccupation with aspects of class and precarity, and the present paper focuses on the relation between class, work and immigration, arguing that Sir Thomas More opens up a space of precarity that pits lower-class English people against foreigners. More specifically, the play hints at an ‘ethnified’, precarious community of foreigners that has an antagonistic relationship with the English-born working classes depicted in the play. While More’s conciliatory speech on the ‘wretched strangers’ in Act 2, Scene 3 was sometimes cited during the European refugee crisis in 2015 as a ‘cure for xenophobia’, I argue for a more complex situation in which the play acknowledges precarity and divisiveness as potent political forces.