UK to end visas for care workers as part of immigration

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Care houses will no longer be able to hire staff abroad as part of a wide reduction in migration, which will greatly restrict the capacity of employers in the United Kingdom to use the visa system to fill lower jobs.

Interior secretary, Yvette Cooper, announced on Sunday that the care route of care workers would be annulled in a few months, part of a migratory white book that will be published on Monday that aims to reduce the network radically Inner migration in Britain.

The new rules that limit specialized workers’ visas to postgraduate -level jobs aimed to end what Cooper called a “Free Free Market Experiment”, where entrepreneurs had been able to recruit freely abroad as the UK’s home labor force reduced and economic inactivity increased.

But he said that while his plans would lead to a “substantial reduction” in the number of people coming to the UK, would not set any Numerical target for clean migration.

The changes occur after the party against the United Kingdom Immigration Reform to get widespread gains In local elections In England earlier this month, he has played ahead of the Sir Keir Starmer Workers’ Party at opinion polls.

In a sign of government recognition from political danger if they fail to reduce migration, Starmer repeated their promise on Sunday “restoring control and reducing migration … with hard new measures”, adding: “British workers – I have my back.”

Cooper told the BBC that closing the care route for care workers, combined with other changes that mainly affect low -qualification jobs, would reduce arrivals from about 50,000 a year.

Asked if the level of net migration should be less than 500,000 a year, he told Sky News that he should “reduce significantly” than this, which indicated that ministers would deploy more measures to reduce numbers.

The latest data, for the year until mid -2014, showed a net migration of 728,000, but the office for the responsibility of the budget hopes that the income will fall to less than half of this level in the medium term as a result of visa restrictions already implemented by the previous conservative government.

The last changes will mean that access to visas for non -graduated functions will be “strictly limited in time”, given only when there is a strong evidence of critical shortage for the Government’s industrial strategy and linked to efforts to train and recruit workers in the United Kingdom, said Cooper.

In construction, for example, there would be a temporary list of occupations where entrepreneurs could hire abroad to facilitate work shortages, while 60,000 more workers in the United Kingdom are formed.

Chris Philp, Shadow’s Home Secretary, was marked by a “small 50,000” retouching “that was not” enough “. He acknowledged that the Conservative Party had taken measures “too late” to combat migration, which exceeded 900,000 in mid -2023 under the previous conservative government.

Cooper also suggested that changes in visa rules for international students graduating in the United Kingdom would be less drastic than they were afraid of universities Who trusts in their fees. Students could still stay and work in the United Kingdom after completing their courses, he said, but universities are expected to do more to ensure compliance with visa rules.

The closure of the care visa route will alarm the providers of social care for adults, who face shortages of chronic staff because the pressures of funding on local authorities leave them unable to raise salaries. There were 131,000 vacancies, which represent more than 8 percent of all papers, by 2023-23, according to Skills for Care, the development of the industry and the planning body in England.

“Where will these workers come from if there is no funding or migration route?” He asked Jane Townson, CEO of the HomeCare Association, adding that suppliers were “deeply concerned that the Government has not properly considered what will happen to the millions of people dependent on home care.”

Cooper told the BBC that they would allow extensions to existing care workers’ visas and that the sector would continue to recruit from the pool of about 10,000 migrants already in the United Kingdom “that came with a care visa.

Attention companies “should recruit this set of people instead of hiring abroad,” he said.

Cooper, said that the measure will be made along with a new “fair payment agreement” for care workers. “We saw a great increase in the recruitment of care work from abroad, but without ever approaching system problems,” he said, including low payment applicants from the United Kingdom.

But entrepreneurs say they will have no means to increase the payment without a fundamental reform of the way the healthcare sector is financed.

A review of the care system, announced earlier this year by the Secretary of Health Wes Streeting, will publish the initial conclusions next year, but it will not be complete Until 2028.

Richard Tice, Deputy Director of the United Kingdom Reform, said that the audience was “furious, furious” for the level of legal and illegal migration, who argued that his party first reached the local election.

He said that the Government Plan was intended to fail, and argued that a “separate immigration department was needed” with “new people who really believe in the cause of sovereignist borders”.