Kritika 
(C): Unsplash
This is the story of some of the countless people who have taken up jobs in care homes across the UK, and were told they would be able to live in the country permanently after 5 years – but that’s been upped to 15 years. This is now the reality of thousands of overseas care workers in the UK, and has led to a campaign for change.
What’s Actually Changing?
The time people need to wait for the UK immigration system to grant them ‘indefinite leave to remain’ in the UK – the official path to permanent residency – could be tripled, according to proposed changes in the UK. The Health and Care Worker Visa was formerly valid for five years, but would now be 15 years.
Let’s put that into perspective – that is no minor policy shift. That’s another ten years of uncertainty – no long-term housing plan, no opportunity for you to get your family settled in the UK and no freedom from a sponsorship system which directly links your right to stay in the UK to your employer.
It’s a matter of more than just documents. If implemented, the 15-year settlement rule could impact a pathway that many migrant workers considered in their decision to migrate here in the first place: care workers’ settlement.
Why Workers Are Calling It a Broken Promise
Betrayal is the word at the top of the news headlines as far as the UK care worker visa is concerned.
The government’s social care workforce crisis was exploited for migrant care workers in the UK, as they were recruited to work in a niche that could not be filled by the domestic workforce. They came. They worked. They managed to maintain the system. Adult social care made up £77.8 billion of the English economy in one year, and overseas adult social care workers are a key element of that.
With recruitment across the board down significantly, as well as the tens of thousands of vacancies in the sector still to be filled, the proposed changes to the UK ILR 2026 could make matters even worse. The possibility of an earned settlement UK route may not seem feasible, which will lead to fewer workers. But those already here are left with the anxiety of years under an “exploitative” system, as its critics claim.
Under the current skilled worker visa UK sponsorship system, a worker’s legal right to continue to work in the UK is dependent on a single employer, which is a huge advantage to the employer. The unions and workers’ groups want to release a visa for the care sector for workers to transfer between placements without having to lose their visa rights.
What’s Being Demanded
Back the three key demands of the campaign aimed at resisting the changes in UK visa policy:
- Maintain the requirements for the five-year path to settlement under the changes to UK work visas.
- Implement a sector-wide ‘visa’ scheme for social care workers to minimise the power of employers over the right to work in the sector.
- Produce a Fair Pay Agreement to deal with endemic pay problems in the sector.
These are not off-the-wall requests. They’re supported by big unions, MPs and workers who have publicly spoken out on issues of exploitation, debt bondage and mental health problems resulting from the current system.
What Happens If Nothing Changes?
The statistics are shocking. There has been a reduction of over 50% in the number of international recruits into the UK care workforce over the past 12 months. The number of workers in the sector is also decreasing in the UK. All the UK residency rules proposed don’t address any of this; they speed it up.
So that’s what we’ve been talking about, in terms of our immigration update for 2026, about immigration into the UK, but in terms of control and containment. Nevertheless, such restrictions will prove to be detrimental to the interests of workers in the care sector, since they lack accompanying reforms. It hollows out both.
The focus of the dialogue and debate on employment rights in the UK is no longer about pay; it’s about dignity, stability and whether or not the UK lives up to the promises it made to those it invited to help.
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