The areas where vulnerable people could lose care due to Labour’s visa clampdown

Résumé détaillé

Parts of the UK could face the most significant impacts of the further decline in international care workers coming to the country, analysis from The i Paper suggests ...

Vulnerable people in parts of the country could be left to “deteriorate” at home with “no care” due to the Government’s visa clampdown, insiders warn, as The i Paper‘s analysis finds high proportions of overseas frontline care workers concentrated in the South.

Since Sir Keir Starmer’s Government stopped issuing the health and care worker visa in July 2025, international recruitment to the sector has dropped by tens of thousands, and numbers are expected to fall further as new rules on migrant settlement come into force.

Andy Burnham’s Government this month exempted care workers from Labour’s plan to make migrants wait 15 years for indefinite leave to remain (ILR), allowing those who arrived before May 2025 to qualify after five years if they earn over £25,000 and meet visa requirements.

But care workers warned that many workers are employed by non-compliant sponsors – which can fail to pay salaries that meet the £25,000 threshold – and could leave the workforce altogether if they face a further five-year wait to qualify for settlement.

“What the Government is doing to migrants [is going to affect] continuity of care and it’s going to affect the quality of care,” Amaka Molokwu, a former care worker who left the UK to return to Nigeria, told The i Paper. Molokwu left the UK over difficulties securing an employer that would have helped her meet the required wage threshold to secure ILR.

The highest proportion of non-British frontline care staff are in London and South-East England, the analysis found, meaning local authorities there could face the most significant effects of the decline in international care workers coming to the UK.

Barking and Dagenham, one of England’s most deprived boroughs, had the highest proportion (84 per cent) of non-British workers in direct care roles in 2025/26 – double the national level, the analysis of Skills for Care data shows.

Non-British workers made up 77 per cent of the local authority and independent social care workforce in Harrow…

Thes…

Début de l'article, extrait de i News. Pour lire la suite, ouvrez l'article chez le média.