The government of the United Kingdom has started considering closing temporary visa schemes for care workers as the country recorded the highest numbers of migrants in the last nine months.
The move was a result of the call made by the New Conservatives party which urged the country’s ministers to end temporary visa schemes for care workers as part of an effort to reduce net migration.
The group, which is reported to be supported by former Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, and former UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, stated that the government could no longer handle the number of migrants coming into the UK on a daily basis.
The Home Office, the UK’s migration department, on Thursday, noted that 143,990 health and care worker visas were granted in the year ending September 2023.
This is more than double the 61,274 for the year to September 2022.
The top three nationalities, according to the Home Office, on these visas are Indians, Nigerians, and Zimbabweans.
Nigeria has the most significant percentage increase behind Zimbabwe at 169 percent and India, with 76 percent.
In terms of dependents granted health and care work visas, Nigeria spiked by 329 percent from 10,533 to 45,203.
The increase in the number of healthcare workers migrating to the UK is attributed to its cheap and easy entry migration conditions as the country faces a shortage of healthcare workers due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The latest statistics indicate that 1.279 million more people have come to the UK than have exited in the last two years.
This, it was noted, has put a lot of pressure on accommodation and amenities in the past month, raising concerns among Britons.
The National Health Service Trusts (NHS) Providers which represents trusts in England has said the “understaffed health and social care system relies on the contribution of highly valued staff from overseas to keep it going”, according to a report by the UK newspaper, The Standard.
They warned that this alone is not enough, saying the domestic workforce must be given a “turbo-boost” in order to create a “sustainable, diverse, and skilled workforce for the future”.
The Director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, Dr Madeleine Sumption, said the long-term solution to shortages in the care workforce is better investment in the sector and higher pay for staff, rather than a continued reliance on workers coming from abroad.
She said, “In the long run, the solution to the problems in care is not necessarily extremely high levels of care worker migration permanently, the solution is likely to involve funding the care sector so that people in the UK are willing to do the jobs.
“And I think part of the challenge the government faces is that people are coming into care and it’s really helping care employers and they’re able to provide care that they weren’t able to provide a couple of years ago and that’s having a benefit in the short run.
“But in the long run, solving the problem and actually addressing the challenge of recruitment in the care sector is really expensive, because it involves paying people enough to persuade them to do the job,” she said.
NHS Providers chief executive, Sir Julian Hartley, on his part, said, “Our understaffed health and social care system relies on the contribution of highly valued staff from overseas to keep it going. But this isn’t sustainable.