Migrant care workers are ordered to leave the UK.
Migrant care workers are ordered to leave the UK, thousands of them “innocent and abandoned.” Despite having done nothing wrong, thousands of migrant care workers have been threatened with deportation after the Home Office initiated enforcement action against their employers.
A brother and sister from India were told they had been duped and had to find another employer to sponsor them within 60 days or leave the country after paying a recruitment agency £18,000 to get care jobs in the UK.
To pay for their move to the UK, Zainab Contractor, 22, and her brother Ismail, 25, had taken out loans from family members. However, upon their arrival, they claim they were not assigned any shifts and that the accomodation they had been promised had not materialised.
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They learned in April that the Home Office had revoked the sponsoring company’s authorization to hire foreign staff. However, they would also face punishment from the enforcement action: the siblings received a letter stating that their sponsorship was void due to its association with the sanctioned company.
Since then, between them, they have sent applications to over 300 employers in an attempt to locate a different business to support them. However, as is typical, they haven’t been able to locate anyone who is willing to take them.
In order to provide a better life for her two-year-old son, Zainab emigrated from Maharashtra, India. She stated that unless they can find a new sponsor by June, they will have to return home with debts they would never be able to pay back. She remarked, “We don’t know how we will survive.”
Ismail stated: “It’s not fair.” Ismail left his position as an investment analyst to move to the UK. Without a chance to be heard, we are being dismissed.
Their situation is hardly unique. According to an investigation by the Observer and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the Home Office revoked the sponsorship certificates of 3,081 carers in 2022 and 2023.
Ninety-four percent of the time, the cancellation was due to the hiring company’s revocation of its sponsorship rights.
A other carer who was facing deportation called the situation “hell.” Katherine*, a 32-year-old woman, quit her job as a teacher in Nigeria to work as a care worker in the United Kingdom. To pay for their move, she and her husband sold their car dealership and land.
She claims, however, that she did not receive the work that she was promised. She claimed that “the manager was not taking my calls.” “We felt bewildered and frustrated.”
Kay Mayo, registered manager of S&K Care 24, acknowledged that the company had not been able to win contracts with local authorities for the provision of care, hence no care worker sponsored by the company had been assigned any work.
The Home Office cancelled the company’s sponsor licence as a result, citing its role as a recruitment agency. After receiving a 60-day notice in March, Katherine now has until mid-May to get a new sponsor or risk having her visa revoked. “My time in this nation has been nothing but hell,” the woman remarked.
The results show how employees are suffering as a result of their employers’ actions—first being taken advantage of or made false promises, and then being threatened with deportation by the government—and have sparked calls for reform of the linked visa system for carers.
According to Aké Achi, the CEO and founder of Migrants at Work, an organisation that assists individuals with work visas, those who have “followed the rules” are being penalised by the Home Office. He declared, “They’ve been punished twice.”
The Home Office stated that it was making great efforts to “assist care workers into alternative jobs when their sponsor has had their licence removed” and that it has taken steps to “crack down on worker exploitation and abuse” in the care industry. However, when pressed for specifics, it just stated that the work was “ongoing” and refused to elaborate.
General secretary of Unison Christina McAnea claimed that employees were being “left in the lurch.”
According to McAnea, “many migrants have sold everything, uprooted their lives, and accrued enormous debts, only to discover they’re currently in danger of deportation.”
“Migrant care workers were invited to come here by the government. Thus, it is only fair that employees who have difficulties and lose their sponsoring employer receive assistance in finding other employment and extended time to obtain support for a new visa.
Journalist and community activist Balakrishnan Balagopal, who has started a petition urging the government to try to repeal the 60-day limit, claimed that there was frequently insufficient time to plan departure or find a new sponsor. He continued by saying that it was particularly difficult on families who had to quickly acquire the money for plane tickets, terminate rental agreements, and take their kids out of school.
“When a once-legitimate sponsor loses their licence, innocent people are finding themselves abandoned,” he stated.
When a sponsor violates the regulations, the only real punishment they generally face is the loss of their foreign sponsorship licence. The business only needs to hire UK personnel to carry on with business as usual.
Significant shortcomings in the initial screening of organisations awarded sponsorship permits have also been levelled against the government.
Hundreds of recently founded care companies were given licences in March, despite having no prior experience offering services in Britain, according to an Observer investigation.
Some organisations that were suspected of being fraudulent were given licences to sponsor workers to come to the UK. These companies had copy-and-paste websites, reviews that seemed phoney, and PO boxes as their address. In addition to at least 268 businesses that had never undergone a Care Quality Commission inspection, recently established businesses that have only been in operation for a few months have also been given authorization to hire workers from overseas.
A few carers who were facing licence revocations and the possibility of losing their visa were able to secure employment during the Home Office’s brief window. With the assistance of a Christian friend, Rachel*, 43, from Nigeria, was able to obtain a sponsorship with five days remaining before her deadline.
She claimed that in addition to herself, the process had an impact on her three children who had immigrated to the UK with her spouse. “They ask me if we’ve seen another sponsor every time they get back from school. Thus, it caused them a great deal of stress,” she stated.
Others in her workplace, she claimed, had not been as fortunate. “It’s awful—some of them cry,” she remarked. “You witness an adult woman sobbing like a kid… You couldn’t even begin to know what to say to comfort her.
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