UK Care Worker Visa Crackdown 2025: ILR Delay, Recruitment Ban & Impact on NHS. How visa regulations changes could affect care sector
Changes to immigration regulations have made life harder for overseas care staff and more limitations could harm the sector, a care provider says.
“The sector relies on overseas workers,” says Andrea Thasan, a care provider and director of the Bedfordshire Care Group.
Care homes and agencies can no longer recruit staff from abroad, and the government is considering raising the period people will have had to work in the UK before being eligible to apply for indefinite leave to remain (ILR) from five years to 10 or 15, in 2025. Consultation, ended in February.
A Home Office spokesman says net migration has reduced by almost 70% and that there is “no apology” for trying to bring it down.
A tracking poll by YouGov, reveals immigration and asylum have been rated by many as among the most significant concerns confronting the country for the previous 15 years.
Thasan’s mother immigrated to the UK from Sri Lanka when she was 19 to study nursing and her family have maintained a care home in Bedfordshire for decades, with 53 of its 150 staff from overseas.
She said care providers are battling with delays and refusals from the Home Office to renew sponsorships for existing staff.
Thasan claims only five of the last 10 visa applications have been approved and the cost of visas has doubled. “A few years ago I paid £3,100 for a three-year visa, now it’s almost £4,500.”
She reckons that extending the route to settlement to 15 years might push up the cost of sponsorship to £22,500 per worker.They are lumped along with others who come here illegally. Staff who came here to care “They’re taking it out on the wrong people,” she continues.“If providers can’t get workers, hospital beds will be blocked and the NHS will spend more keeping people in hospital for longer,” she argues.
Overseas staff are paid a minimum rate of £12.82 an hour, above the £12.71 minimum living wage for UK workers over 21, the government requires.
This is an incentive to encourage providers to employ from the UK, but Thasan believes this does not work for her business: “We have very few UK people applying. “Sometimes we don’t even get one.
Thasan adds that majority of their money comes from local authorities, who set funding levels for care, meaning care providers would struggle to increase employees’ wages any higher.
Esther Akinpelu relocated to the UK from Lagos, Nigeria with her husband and child in 2022 and works for Prime Care, a domiciliary care firm in Dunstable, Bedfordshire.
Since 2024, overseas care professionals have been unable to bring their partners or children to the UK on their visas.
Under existing immigration laws, she is eligible to file for ILR next year, adds Akinpelu.
“The family will move to Canada if the rules change, she said.“We wouldn’t stay around,” she says. “We have friends and family here, but we have to survive… You can’t live in an unstable environment.”
She claims she feels “misled and unappreciated” by the UK government and believes “health care will be in serious trouble” without international carers.
The number of care workers coming to the UK had already plummeted before the government stopped the care route for abroad persons last year, said Ben Brindle, a researcher at the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford.“The changes [to visa rules] mean that migrants cannot leave the care sector for another 10 years because people on work visas are tied to their employers. Settlement, however, lets people work in any job and makes it easier to quit the field.Extending the route to settlement for migrant care workers would help bring down short-term expenses to public funds. Care employment is very low-paid, so those who do settle and continue to work in the field would be entitled to in-work benefits, particularly if they had children.”
BBC: Care worker Janet, who has a degree in food and nutrition and is from Nigeria – but who the BBC has agreed not to name – says lengthening the length of time someone needs to be working in the UK before they can claim ILR “makes us feel like we are temporary workers”.It makes us feel like… we are not permitted to blend into society,” the 27 year old adds.
Under existing standards, Janet would have qualified for ILR in 2028, but under revised ideas it may be 2038.“We’re paying our taxes, we’re working hard,” she continues.
Janet thinks that if the government alters the regulations of immigration, a lot of care workers will leave the UK to work in New Zealand or Canada.”Where we come from, we were trained to work hard,” she explains.
Dinesh Pushparajan, from India, is employed at a care home in Bedford, and says the long-term uncertainty for international care workers impacts both the carers and those they care for.
He believes discussions about asylum in the UK have helped form public views of lawful migration.”We are helping the economy… they are taking a hit on us, which is not right,” he said.
Oana Caspreac, 38, a Romanian director of care at Prime Care, says she is not affected by anticipated changes to immigration laws because she came to Britain before Brexit, but she is concerned about younger staff. “I don’t feel welcome in this country any more,” she adds.
She thinks public discourse has led to misconceptions about immigration.Sponsorship care workers were not arriving by boat or by lorry. “They went through a process,” she explains.
She says the NHS is increasingly using home care professionals but that the uncertainty over future rules makes it more difficult to plan for the workforce.We’ve got to accomplish more with less. We don’t know how to support personnel if we don’t know what’s going to happen.“It’s not the key to make them fear their presence in this country,” she continues.
A government spokeswoman said it had banned international recruitment for care workers because of “unacceptable levels of abuse and exploitation”, with a 2025 Unison research revealing many people from overseas paid fees to unscrupulous care organisations promising jobs that never materialised.
The government says it aims to improve UK recruitment with a new higher minimum salary for care workers. Skills for Care, which represents and supports the adult social care workers, says it has not been set, but £500m has been budgeted to introduce the level in 2028.
A Home Office spokesman said: “A decision on permanent residency for overseas staff will be made once comments from a consultation process which closed in February are assessed.
The Conservative Party also says care workers already in the UK should have to wait 10 years for permanent status.
Reform UK backs a tougher policy where care staff remain on temporary visas indefinitely.
The Green Party and Liberal Democrats say they want the rules on settlement to remain the same.