Immigration changes spell trouble for care, construction & hospitality sectors

Under the white paper, ‘Restoring control over the immigration system’, published this week, businesses seeking to recruit from overseas will first have to put forward their plans to train and develop UK workers. The care worker visa for new overseas applicants will be abolished. The immigration salary list of occupations with a lower salary threshold for the skilled worker visa will be scrapped, the skills threshold for work visas will be raised to graduate level, and other work visas will be strictly time-limited.

Visas for high-skilled people such as nurses will be fast-tracked. The qualifying period for settlement will be doubled to ten years. The white paper also sets an 18-month time limit on graduates remaining in the UK after finishing their studies, while legislation will be introduced to ‘address cases where Art 8 right to family life legal arguments are being used to frustrate deportation where removal is clearly in the public interest’, the Home Office said.

Sacha Wooldridge, partner at Birketts, said the government plans included increased immigration fees. This could mean ‘many employers will need to pay at least £14,250 before an applicant will be eligible to secure permanent residence—a 158% increase on their current costs.

‘This is the cost of a single worker and excludes family members and any legal advice needed. A cut in the Graduate visa duration… will also see employers needing to sponsor earlier.

‘Increasing residence requirements to ten years will mean more people remain subject to the “no recourse to public funds restriction” for a lot longer—a rule that stops applicants claiming welfare benefits including universal credit, carers allowance and housing benefits’.

Emma Brooksbank, partner at Freeths, said: ‘These changes will be a disaster for sectors such as care, construction and hospitality who already suffer from chronic labour shortages.

‘Limiting the immigration system to this extent could result in the closure of education providers, understaffed care homes, house building projects failing to get off the ground and restrictions on growth in key sectors such as AI and tech.’