People who travel to the United Kingdom to work in the social care sector are not permitted to bring their children and partners on their visas.
The recent proposals come as part of the UK government’s plan to curb immigration levels, VisaGuide.World reports.
The changes to the immigration rules in the UK parliament were introduced recently by Home Secretary James Cleverly.
Today in Parliament, we have laid an order to ban overseas care workers from bringing dependants. This is just one part of our plan to deliver the biggest-ever cut in migration.
Recently, it was reported that migrants planning to head to the UK for work purposes would be subject to additional challenges after the UK’s Home Secretary announced new rules that would restrict work migration to the UK.
Among them was increasing the minimum general salary for occupations under the Skilled Worker Route, thus removing the opportunity for Health and Social Care to bring dependants to Britain, removing the salary discount for occupations on the Shortage Occupation List and also increasing financial requirements for family applications.
Local media reports noted that the new proposals would become effective in the second quarter of this year.
Authorities in the UK announced the exclusion of Health and Social Care Visa Workers from the minimum salary increase but abolished the ability of these persons to bring their dependents to Britain. A report from Fragomen noted that these regulations would become effective on March 11 this year.
However, the new changes introduced by authorities in the UK have not been unanimously welcomed. According to a report from Info Migrants, charities supporting migrants have said that preventing overseas care workers from bringing their families to join them is “dehumanising” and will result in workers becoming destitute.
Dora-Olivia Vicol, who heads the Work Rights Center, told the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. that migrant workers already live in precarious situations.
The only thing it will achieve is to break up families, scare workers and erode trust.
On the other hand, Colin Yeo, a barrister and immigration law blogger, has a different opinion. According to him, the changes will not cause staff shortages in the sector over the long term.
In addition, he suggested that this could instead lead to more people coming to the UK from countries with a tradition of emigration for work and sending remittances home to families.