‘Punishing migrant care workers won’t fix Britain’s problems. It will make them worse’
Less than 24 hours after the Home Secretary announced plans to change the rules on indefinite leave to remain (ILR), emails from worried constituents began arriving.
One expressed a powerful sense of betrayal and injustice: “In October 2023, my husband, my eight-year-old son, and I, holding a skilled worker visa, arrived in the UK believing that it would be a fair, equitable, democratic place where we could feel safer. As immigrants, we are making an extraordinary effort as a family to adapt to a new country and add value to it by paying our taxes from the first day we arrived.”
Since arriving in Parliament, I have been a consistent supporter of immigration reform. The existing employer sponsorship model for skilled workers creates a dangerous power imbalance, giving bosses too much control over employees and leaving care workers and others at risk of exploitation.
The trouble is, ministers keep misdiagnosing the problems we’ve inherited and – as a result – produce the wrong solutions. We are presented with immigration policy designed to out-Reform Reform and chase Nigel Farage’s tail – when we should be starting from the principle of fairness and securing the skills we need.
Until now, the skilled worker route offered a five-year pathway to ‘Indefinite Leave to Remain’ (IRL). The government is proposing to double this qualifying period to 10 years, rising to 15 for those deemed low-skilled, alongside new conditionality based on the idea of “earned” status.
It was wrong for the Home Secretary to describe workers in the social care sector as a low-income and a low-contribution group in our society. A Labour government should not be punishing migrant care workers for having their wages depressed. Social care is not just a job; it is the work of providing dignity and support for our loved ones. This is work we should value and professionalise – not denigrate.
The most unfair aspect of these changes is that they will apply to people already here. Changing the rules halfway through a legally established settlement journey is grossly unfair and, I believe, profoundly un-British. For a country that prides itself on being rules-based, pulling the rug out from under these workers who came in good faith is simply wrong.
Over 50 MPs have signed my Parliamentary Motion opposing the changes – it calls on the government to retain the five-year pathway for existing skilled worker visa holders.
These are not numbers on a spreadsheet. They are people who have built careers, put down roots, and made lives based on a promise our government made them.
Ministers seem to have forgotten that the Health and Care Worker Visa was introduced after the pandemic precisely because there was a massive staff shortage in the sector. This remains the case today.
We now have the troubling situation where the left hand of government does not seem to know what the right is doing. The long-awaited Casey Review will set out a new strategy for social care, while the Home Office squeezes out the very workers keeping the sector running. At the same time, the Chancellor’s mantra of “growth, growth, growth” is undermined by pushing workers out of key industries.
We do need to strengthen the domestic workforce through better training, pay, and progression, but that is a separate task, and simply tightening immigration rules will not deliver it overnight. Making it harder for the social care sector to operate will only deepen public frustration in a country already burdened by the sense that everything is broken. If care homes, particularly outside big cities, cannot recruit staff and are forced to close, the outcomes will be depressingly predictable as right-wing politician double down on scapegoating migrants for pressure on services.
We need a major rethink of this flawed approach and to recognise not only the contribution migrant workers make to our society but also what will happen if we force them to leave. Our Labour government must understand that it is the workers – not the billionaires or the bankers – who keep our country moving.
It is time to stop echoing Reform and start championing those who perform vital roles in our society.
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