Numerous care providers in the UK, who entered with valid visas, worry about being sent back home. Many have lost their licenses and the jobs they were promised as a result of the government's recent crackdown on employers who sponsor employees. Numerous migrant care workers are being used by con artists, according to attorney Rumbidzai Bvunzawabaya, who characterizes the situation as a nightmare.

Ismail is a young Indian care worker. "We are being thrown out [of the UK] without being heard," she adds. Earlier this year, Ismail, his sister Zainab, her husband, and their small son entered the UK on special visas meant for social workers and health care providers.

Launched in 2020, the visas grant access for a duration of three to five years, with the opportunity for qualifying individuals to bring family along. A wave of applications over the past year prompted the government to review its policies and start clamping down on sponsoring corporations; thousands of them may have been threatened with deportation as a result.

Zainab and Ismail are just a few of thousands of care workers who say they have been scammed out of thousands of pounds they say they paid middlemen to enter the UK on legal visas, only to find that the jobs they were promised in the care sector did not materialize.

Speaking to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) and the Observer newspaper in May this year, they explained that they borrowed money from relatives to pay 18,000 pounds (about 21,281 euros) for their visas. On arrival in the UK, they got none of the promised accommodation, or more importantly work.

In April, they received a letter from the Home Office telling them the company that they thought had sponsored them to work had been taken off the list. They were given 60 days to find an alternative sponsor and employment in the care sector, or risk being returned to India. They say that between them, they have applied for nearly 300 more care jobs but still haven't gotten any responses. "We don't know how we will survive," Zainab told TBIJ.

'It's an absolute nightmare'

"We have seen many, many people in that [Ismail and Zainab's] situation," says Rumbidzai Bvunzawabaya, a solicitor for over 20 years. Through her community interest company Tulia, Bvunzawabaya works with many migrant care workers and the companies that employ them, offering them legal advice and support.

"Every day we get new referrals from all over the UK. It’s a common issue -- once you have heard one story, it feels like you have heard all of them, as they are really similar in what they are experiencing. It's an absolute nightmare," Bvunzawabaya says over the phone to InfoMigrants.

In 2023, a total of 59,000 care workers came to the UK, compared to 1,982 in June 2022, according to Bvunzawabaya. This figure does not include the dependents, who are approximately three for each care worker.

According to the Migration Observatory, the number of applicants reached 77,000 in the year ending June 2023. Care workers made up 64 percent of the skilled worker route that year.

Health and social care visa - how it works

Those who are granted a visa can work for a UK employer approved by the Home Office (Interior Ministry). To apply, you need a certificate of sponsorship from your employer with information about the role you are coming to the UK to do.

You must be able to speak, read, write and understand English to apply, and you usually need to prove that knowledge for the application form. The visa can last up to five years before you need to extend it. Once in the UK, you can apply to extend or update your visa as many times as you like, as long as you still meet the eligibility requirements.

After five years, you may be granted 'indefinite leave to remain' and thus be on the path to settle permanently in the UK. Therefore, this kind of visa is very attractive to those who might hope to migrate to the UK, and was seen as a potential solution for the government's shortages in the health and social care sectors, particularly following the departure of many EU citizens following Brexit.

Costs of the visa

Until March 11 this year, the visa also allowed you to bring dependents to the UK. This proved very attractive to many applicants, many of whom might be women with young children. Up until that point, everyone applying, including any partners and children, had to prove they have enough personal savings to support themselves while in the UK.

According to the UK government website, you need to have at least 1,270 pounds (about 1,503 euros) in the bank, as well as the ability to pay the application fees. You will need to be able to demonstrate that you have that money in your bank account for at least 28 days in a row. Day 28 must be within 31 days of applying for this visa.

In addition, you need to prove that you have an additional 285 pounds for your partner (about 336 euros) and 315 (about 372 euros) for your first dependent child and 200 pounds (about 236 euros) for any dependent child after that. Alternatively, you had to show your partner and children have enough money to support themselves. If you can’t show that, you have to be able to prove that the sponsor or endorsing body agree to support them financially or will pay for their accommodation to at least the same amount.

A visa for up to three years costs 284 pounds per person (about 335 euros) and one of more than three years costs 551 pounds (about 651 euros).

Problems with the system

According to Bvunzawabaya, the health and care visa "opened up migration routes to people who were unskilled. And that literally opened up the floodgates to many many people coming from all over the world."

Lots of companies got on board quickly to register to become recruitment and sponsorship companies to feed this new demand. In 2021, there were over 34,000 companies registered to employ Tier 2 (skilled workers) and Tier 5 (unskilled workers), not all of them operated in the health and social care sector.

"I think what the Home Office didn’t think about," explains Bvunzawabaya, "was monitoring and regulating properly who can actually sponsor these care workers."

Bvunzawabaya explains that in her opinion, the Home Office was so keen to fill the shortages in the sector, the number of companies registering essentially became a bit like the Wild West. New companies were being set up and approved within days, many with no track record in the sector.

Easy targets?

Although the cost of a visa application is only a few hundred pounds, many migrants were willing to pay thousands to obtain legal entry to the UK, and essentially they became easy targets for scammers and people operating within the initially very lax rules.

Bvunzawabaya believes that the apparent ease of entry meant that the visas were "taken advantage of by rogue elements, by criminals."

"Lots of people want to come to the UK. People will pay tens of thousands to traffickers to board a boat and cross the Channel, so you can imagine when they hear they can pay someone to come in legally, and with a job."

"It was turned into a commodity, that’s what we heard, and people were prepared to pay 7,000 pounds (about 8,275 euros) or even 10,000 pounds (about 11,822 euros) for that route. We’ve heard of people buying these visas for 24,000, (about 28,374 euros) 18,000 pounds (about 21,281 euros). These were all sold by middlemen."

Some of the companies, thinks Bvunzawabaya, who were operating legitimately in the sector, didn’t even know that the people they had employed had bought the right to come in and work.

Cheating the requirements

Bvunzawabaya thinks that part of the problem might have been that some migrant workers might have been "impatient." She acknowledges that jumping through all the bureaucratic hoops and meet the government requirements can feel like "a lot."

Those who don’t meet the requirements for the visa are the people who are often targeted by people smugglers. "The smugglers were targeting people in Bangladesh, people in Pakistan, sometimes whole villages of people," says Bvunzawabaya.

These smugglers often had nothing to do with the actual care agencies. "I've been working with one company, trying to help them because they realized they had recruited many people who don’t speak English."

The care companies are required to carry out interviews before issuing a sponsor visa. However, these people found ways around the requirement for a certain level of language fluency says Bvunzawabaya. "The interviews were held over Zoom, and anyone can sit there and do the interview. But when they then turn up, they can’t speak English. They use a front."

Cloned companies and websites

Another problem that Bvunzawabaya has come across is the cloning of companies and websites. Certificates of sponsorship were hacked, and legitimate company websites were duplicated. As a result, people were recruited in the name of legitimate companies, but the payments were going to middlemen. "When the migrants came here, the companies didn’t know what they were doing here."

Even the shift distribution system had been cloned in one case, so the migrants thought they had been programmed for shifts. "The whole system has been exploited by rogue elements in so many different ways."

Some people recruited via that route lack the skills to be a care worker. "When you look at these figures, that explains why we are struggling. We are just a small charity, but we are overwhelmed," says Bvunzawabaya.

Crackdown

Once the Home Office discovered the "mess" that had been created by the lax rules and the commodification of this route into the UK, they stated cracking down. "They started to regulate," explains Bvunzawabaya.

The regulation process has become "indiscriminate", leading to companies having their licenses revoked, causing people to lose their jobs, and thus their right to stay in the UK.

This all started happening in 2023, says Bvunzawabaya. That year, the legal migration figures were much higher than the government had expected, and this contradicted promises to bring overall migration to the UK down. That year 1.2 million people entered the UK legally. Net migration stood at 685,000, according to the Office for National Statistics.

In some cases, the middlemen profited because some of the care companies had such high demands for workers, that they didn’t feel they had time to do the recruitment themselves, Bvunzawabaya says. They trusted these middlemen, but then found themselves with a lot of workers who couldn’t work, as they don’t speak a word of English.

The migrants themselves felt angry, as they felt because they had paid, they should now be offered work. Some of the companies found it difficult to lay off those who they had recruited, although they couldn’t place them in work, and so the problems got bigger for everyone concerned.

'Going back is not an option'

Most workers are not keen to go back to their country of origin. Like Ismail and Zainab, they have huge debts, they may have borrowed from their relatives, and they have an expectation that they would work. "There are a lot of tensions within the community if they come home without the promised work. Going back when you haven’t paid back what you owe is not an option."

Bvunzawabaya does Facebook Live sessions to reach people "at source" and warn them about these criminal routes. Many Facebook users then tell her that they are aware of the risks, but for them, the most important thing is to enter.

"I think a lot of people do know what they are doing when they pay for these routes in."

Once she was told "'We would rather suffer in England, because there are opportunities. If you have a car accident in England, you get free emergency health care. In Zimbabwe, you go to the hospital, there is no free healthcare, there is no X-ray machine, there are no pain killers.' So, they feel that no matter what it takes, they’d rather get to England," Bvunzawabaya says.

There are others, Bvunzawabaya concedes, who didn’t know that you didn’t have to pay thousands to acquire the visa.

"The age that we live in, people like things that are quick. I have told people to look through the list of [legitimate] sponsors on the Home Office website and send in your 700 applications and wait for answers. I realized that no one wants to make that effort now. People think if they pay for something, someone will make it happen."

For migrants still hoping to enter the UK via legal routes, Bvunzawabaya warns that you shouldn’t expect to pay thousands to enter the UK for work, and should be suspicious if this is what you are being asked to do.

'Sold a pipe dream'

After years of experience working in the field, Bvunzawabaya thinks the lines are blurred. Although you could argue that many do know what they are getting in to when they pay for these kinds of routes, she believes they don't have a full understanding of how difficult life in the UK can be without a job and without all the protections that come with legal residency.

"They are vulnerable in the sense of their desperation. And they are sold a pipe dream. They think that in this country, England, the streets are paved with gold. It is the land of milk and honey. They think everything will be fine, but when they get here, even the nature of the work, it is very difficult to do care work. Local people don’t want to do it."

"They are sold something else, or they believe something else, but it is because they are vulnerable people. They know, but they don’t really know, and they are taken advantage of because of their desperation, and when someone is desperate, they would do anything to get out of a bad situation."