Care Homes will no longer be able to hire staff abroad in the context of a radical distribution on migration which will strongly restore the capacity of British employers to use the visa system to fill jobs with low qualification content.
Interior secretary, Yvette Cooper, announced on Sunday that the visa route for healthcare officers would be canceled in a few months, being part of a white migration paper which will be published on Monday which aims to radically reduce the net Interior migration to Great Britain.
New rules limiting qualified workers visas to higher level jobs were intended to end that Cooper called for a “stranded free market experience”, where employers were able to recruit freely abroad as the local workforce of the United Kingdom has decreased and that economic inactivity has increased.
But she said that even if her plans would lead to a “substantial reduction” of the number of people coming to the United Kingdom, she would not put Digital target for net migration.
The changes come after the anti-immigration reform of the British party made generalized gains During local elections In England, earlier this month, and took front of Sir Keir Starmer's Labor Party in opinion polls.
In a sign of the government's recognition of political danger, if they fail to reduce migration, Starmer repeated his promise on Sunday to “restore control and reduce migration … with new difficult measures”, adding: “British workers – I have your back.”
Cooper told the BBC that the closure of the itinerary of the care agents visa, combined with other changes mainly affecting low -skilled jobs, would lead to a reduction in arrivals of around 50,000 per year.
When asked if the net migration level should be less than 500,000 a year, she told Sky News that she should “drop much more” than that, reporting that ministers will deploy other measures to reduce numbers.
The latest data, for the year in mid-2024, showed a net migration of 728,000, but the budget office of the budget expects that the entries fall less than half of this level in the medium term due to the visa restrictions already implemented by the previous conservative government.
The latest modifications will mean access to visas for non -graduate roles will be “strictly limited in time”, only when there is solid evidence of shortages essential to the industrial strategy of the government, and linked to efforts to train and recruit British workers, said Cooper.
In construction, for example, there would be a temporary list of occupations where employers could hire abroad to facilitate labor shortages while 60,000 additional British workers are trained.
Chris Philp, secretary of the home, described him as “small adjustment of 50,000” which was “not enough”. He recognized that the Conservative Party had taken “too late” measures to combat migration, which exceeded 900,000 in the mid -2023 within the framework of the previous conservative government.
Cooper also suggested that changes in visa rules for international students with the United Kingdom would be less drastic than fearing universities that rely on their costs. Students could always stay and work in the United Kingdom after completing their lessons, she said, but universities should do more to guarantee compliance with visa rules.
The closure of the alarmera visa itinerary alarmera providers of social care for adults, which are facing shortages of chronic personnel, as financing pressures on local authorities leave them unable to increase wages. There were 131,000 vacant positions – representing more than 8% of all roles – in 2023-2010, according to Skills for Care, the industry development and planning organization in England.
“Where will these workers come from if neither the funding nor the migration route exists?” Asked Jane Townson, director general of the Homecare Association, adding that the providers were “deeply concerned about the fact that the government did not correctly considered what will happen to the millions of people who depend on home care”.
Cooper told the BBC that the extensions of existing care care visas would be authorized and that the sector would continue to be able to recruit in the swimming pool of around 10,000 migrants already in the United Kingdom “which came to a visa of care agents … to jobs that were not really here or that were not appropriate”.
Care companies “should recruit in this basin of people rather than recruiting abroad,” she said.
This decision will come next to a new “fair compensation agreement” for care workers, said Cooper. “We have seen this enormous increase in the recruitment of care work abroad, but without in reality tackling the problems of the system,” she said, who includes candidates in the United Kingdom at low wages for roles.
But employers say that they will have no way of increasing salary without fundamental reform of the way the care sector is funded.
An examination of the healthcare system, announced earlier this year by the health secretary, Wes Street, will publish the initial results next year but will not be complete Until 2028.
Richard Tice, the deputy chief of Reform UK, said that the public was “rage, furious” with the level of legal and illegal migration, who, according to him, explained that his party came first in the local elections.
He said that the government's plan was intended to fail and argued that a “separate and devoted department of immigration” with “new people who really believe in the cause of sovereign borders” was necessary.
