The New Conservatives group, reportedly supported by former Home Secretary Suella Braverman and former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, has urged ministers to shut down temporary visa programs for care workers to reduce net migration before next year's presidential election.
This comes as the UK struggles to cope with the influx of migrants, with 1.279 million more people entering the country than leaving it in the past two years, placing a significant burden on infrastructure and amenities that has raised concerns among the public.
Despite the Conservative Party's 2019 manifesto pledge to bring migration numbers down, net migration into the UK hit a record high of 745,000 in 2022, according to revised estimates from the Office for National Statistics. As a result, the National Health Service Trusts have stated that propping up social care with temporary visa workers is unsustainable.
In the year ending September 2023, the Home Office granted 143,990 health and care worker visas, more than twice the 61,274 granted in the previous year. The top three nationalities on these visas are Indians, Nigerians, and Zimbabweans, with Nigeria seeing a 169% increase, followed by Zimbabwe with 76%, and India with 329% increase in dependents granted health and care work visas.
The rise in healthcare workers migrating to the UK is attributed to the country's cheap and easy entry migration conditions, with the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbating the shortage of healthcare workers. As of March 2023, Nigerian-trained doctors practicing in the UK reached 11,001, causing a surge in non-EU immigration to the UK.
However, the Director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, Dr. Madeleine Sumption, stressed that the long-term solution to the shortage of care workers is better investment in the sector and higher pay for staff, rather than relying on workers from overseas.
