Indian Healthcare Worker Visa Applications Drop In UK After New Rules

The UK government on Wednesday revealed a significant drop in visa applications for the healthcare sector. This comes a month after the government enforced restrictions on family dependents.

According to the latest Home Office statistics, there is a 76% drop in overseas workers applying for jobs in the UK's care sector and a 58% fall in family dependents in the health and care visa category in the first full month since restrictions were placed, as compared with April 2023. Indian nationals topped the health and care visa grants last year.

The number of dependents, or spouses and children, in the student visa category also registered a significant drop of 79% over the same period since those new rules came into force earlier this year.

"The plan to deliver the largest ever cut to legal migration in our country’s history is working. This monthly data is the most upp-todate picture of visa levels, showing that on current trajectories, legal migration continues to fall across key routes," said Home Secretary James Cleverly.

The monthly data was released to reflect the impact of changes by the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak-led government, which is keen to show falling immigration numbers ahead of a general election later this year.

“The British people deserve an immigration system that puts their interests first. Our approach is about control and fairness—to the highly skilled coming here who deserve a decent wage, to taxpayers who shouldn’t be relied on to support them, and to British workers who shouldn’t be undercut,” the Home Secretary said.

Since March, previously unmonitored care providers in England acting as sponsors for migrants have been required to register with industry regulator Care Quality Commission—a move the government said will address worker exploitation and abuse within the sector.

Indian nationals have topped the health and care visa grants, with 38,866 given out last year, and are now facing the brunt of these previously lax rules governing dubious recruitment agencies.

“Some of these victims had borrowed thousands of pounds to get the visas and now face deportation for no fault of theirs,” said the National Council of Gujarati Organisations UK, which is lobbying on behalf of these workers, many of whom are from Gujarat.

“Some of these agencies are bogus and operate from a hired desk at serviced offices. The majority of them were not checked for their genuineness by the Home Office and were issued with quotas like confetti,” said Kanti Nagda of the NCGO UK, which is now seeking a meeting with the Home Secretary to appeal on behalf of these workers.

These stranded workers, some of them with families and young children across London, Leicester, Oxford and other UK cities, are desperately looking for job opportunities that fit within their narrow work permit rules or face deportation within 60 days.

“Sixty days is a very short notice for a family to arrange departure as it could unsettle their children's schooling, lead to loss of rent or deposit, furnishing costs, air ticket and relocation costs,” reads an online petition on the UK Parliament website, which is edging towards the 10,000-signatures mark, after which the UK government must officially respond.

The Home Office has admitted there is clear evidence that care workers have been offered visas under false pretences, travelling thousands of miles for jobs that simply don’t exist, or being paid far below the minimum wage required for their work.

One impacted worker from Rajkot, currently based in Leicester with his wife and three children, has reported his agency to the Action Fraud helpline and is lobbying the UK government for justice.

“I cannot work anywhere else due to my right-to-work restrictions. But this company is not giving me work and has not even completed the joining process in the last four months. I am continuously following up to start work and get back my deposit amount. But I am not getting any response,” the hapless professional said in his letter to Sunak.

This comes at a time when India already faces a poor nurse-population ratio and the situation is set to worsen. With nurses emigrating to other countries in large numbers, doctors and medical experts have observed that this creates a big gap in addressing the country's healthcare needs.

(With inputs from PTI)