Migrant health care workers and fruit pickers who have been exploited by rogue employers should be given the right to a replacement visa, lawyers and charities have warned.
Over 100 lawyers and rights organisations have warned the home secretary that the UK’s migrant worker visa schemes are at risk of breaching international human rights obligations.
Migrants who come to the UK on the health and care worker visa and the skilled worker scheme continue to be exploited and abused by some employers. Workers often get into high levels of debt in order to pay middlemen who help them get jobs through the government’s seasonal worker scheme for fruit pickers.
In a letter sent on Thursday, solicitors and others have written to Yvette Cooper to express “serious concerns” about the treatment of migrant workers arriving in the UK on sponsored visas.
They say foreign workers are being deceived about the work they will do in the UK, are having their movement restricted by employers, and are experiencing physical and sexual violence once they arrive.
In some cases, rogue employers are holding on to their passports and other identity documents, withholding wages, or forcing them to work excessive overtime.
Lawyers say they have represented hundreds of people who were saddled with “life-altering levels of debt in their countries of origin to obtain an offer of employment in the UK”.
On arriving in the UK, affected migrants realise they have been scammed and the work they were promised doesn’t exist. They are then left destitute in the UK unable to access financial help and often resorting to the black market in order to survive.
Workers in this position are currently given a 60-day grace period to find another sponsor, switch to a different visa or leave the country.
In a bid to crack down on rogue sponsors, the government revoked more than 470 sponsorship licences from employers between July 2022 and December 2024. However this has left more than 39,000 workers without employment.
In the letter, solicitors, law centres, migrants rights organisations and academics call on the Home Office to provide a temporary work visa for those migrants who have suffered exploitation, so they don’t become destitute.
The propose that a new ‘workplace justice’ visa be created to give workers the right to remain in the UK and seek employment for as long as their original visa.
They are also pushing for an extension to the 60-day grace period given to exploited migrant workers to find a new work sponsor if their original one is banned. They argue that an extension to six months would be more in line with other countries and would give all migrant workers a more reasonable timeframe to find another job, make another immigration application, or leave the UK.
They warn that the government is “at risk of breaching the UK’s international human rights obligations”, namely article four of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) which gives states a duty to protect against exploitation and trafficking.
Under article three of the ECHR, people are also protected from torture, and inhuman and degrading treatment.
Dr Dora-Olivia Vicol, CEO of the Work Rights Centre, said: “We are watching a crisis of migrant worker exploitation unfold as thousands of people are trapped in situations of overwork, abuse or destitution.
“Unless this government takes action, we will look back on this as a national scandal, ashamed that it was allowed to carry on for so long.”
Zoe Bantleman, legal director at the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association, said: “Unlike their British colleagues, the migrant worker cannot live in the UK without their employer sponsoring them. If the Home Office clamps down on their employer, unless they can somehow manage to find a new sponsor, the migrant worker loses their visa, their livelihood, and the life they have built in the UK.
“In a sponsorship system such as this, there must be safeguards to rebalance this asymmetry of power and ensure migrant workers can report violations and seek enforcement of their employment and human rights.”
The number of people coming to the UK on health and social care worker visas has been declining after new migration rules were introduced in January 2024.
These rules include a ban on overseas care workers bringing family dependants and a rise in the salary threshold for skilled workers to £38,700.
The Home Office has been contacted for comment.
