By Chantelle Muzanenhamo
The UK government is planning to cease issuing care worker visas to foreign nationals as part of its efforts to cut net migration. The new rules, expected to take effect later this year, will require care homes to recruit domestically or hire individuals already residing in the UK.
Zimbabwe is among the countries likely to be heavily affected by this decision. Many Zimbabwean care workers have previously migrated to the UK under the Health and Care Worker visa route, seeking better employment opportunities amid Zimbabwe’s ongoing economic difficulties. This visa route has been a pathway for Zimbabweans aiming to work in the UK’s care sector.
According to Repoprts, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper confirmed the government’s plans to introduce new restrictions on lower-skilled workers and to close the overseas care worker visa route entirely.
She stated, “We’re going to introduce new restrictions on lower-skilled workers, so new visa controls, because we think actually what we should be doing is concentrating on the higher-skilled migration and we should be concentrating on training in the UK.”
Under the new rules, care companies will be expected to recruit from within the UK, extend existing visas, or hire from a pool of over 10,000 foreign care workers who arrived legally but were left unemployed due to employer exploitation.
Cooper explained, “Companies should recruit from a pool of people who came as care workers in good faith but had been ‘exploited’ by unscrupulous employers. They can also extend existing visas or recruit from those already in the country on other visas. But we do think it’s time to end that care worker recruitment from abroad.”
While the government will not set specific net migration targets, officials anticipate these changes could reduce migration by up to 50,000 workers annually. The measures also include raising the skill threshold for work visas from A-level to graduate level and narrowing the list of shortage occupations eligible for temporary exemptions.
For Zimbabwean care workers, these changes threaten to disrupt a pathway that many relied on to migrate to the UK. Thousands of Zimbabweans have trained and worked in the UK’s care sector through this visa route, and the new policies could impact their ability to continue working in the UK or even to migrate there in the future.