Britain’s visa system is enabling modern-day slavery. Why are ministers making things worse?

Dora-Olivia Vicol is CEO of the Work Rights Centre, a charity that advocates for migrant and low-paid workers, and Evie Breese is Work Rights Centre’s communications officer.

Imagine you had spent your life savings moving to a new job abroad, but were then forced to work punishing hours for a fraction of the promised pay. Would you feel free to speak up? Probably not if it meant you risked being sacked and deported.

Yet this is the power imbalance at the heart of the UK’s sponsorship system. It forces migrant workers to live with exploitation, or risk visa cancellation. In the worst cases, cruel employers are emboldened to treat visa workers as modern-day slaves, maximising profit by working staff to breaking point, knowing the threat of deportation will silence dissent.

Between 2020 and 2025, Britain issued almost one million employer-sponsored visas to people from overseas. When the UK chose Brexit, and with it the end of free movement across the EU, a system of employer-sponsored visas took its place.

This requires a migrant worker to be granted a Certificate of Sponsorship from a Home Office-approved employer to get a visa. This certificate ties them to one job, with one employer. If that employer decides to cancel a worker’s visa - for any reason - they officially have just 60 days to find a new sponsor, or become undocumented and risk deportation. 

About two years ago we started to see a worrying new pattern of enquiries. People from India, Bangladesh, then Nepal, Ghana, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, had sold everything they had, and left good jobs and loved ones behind, for a Certificate of Sponsorship. Many went into debt to cover flight costs and visa fees, or paid illegal recruitment fees they believed were mandatory, thinking they would pay this off through hard work for fair pay in Britain.

Last year, a senior care worker from Bangladesh came to the Work Rights Centre having fled the care home where he was forced to work 60 days straight, was denied medical help after developing an infection, and was paid far below the minimum wage. When he tried to speak up, he was threatened with violence and visa cancellation.

We find the lion’s share of modern slavery cases in the care sector, because this is where most sponsored work visas have been issued. But two-thirds of employers who had their licences revoked by the Home Office between 2022 and 2024 were operating in other sectors. The risk of modern-day slavery is not sector specific, but inherent in sponsorship.

A Nepalese man sponsored to work in a high street supermarket was told that if he did not return a third of his salary to his employer each month, he would be sacked and deported. It was only when the police visited the shop following a tip-off that he was able to seek help.

Both workers are now in the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) for victims of modern-day slavery or human trafficking. Police are investigating their employers, but the conviction rate is staggeringly low. 

Between July 2023 and June 2024, there were 17,120 potential victims of modern slavery referred to the NRM across the UK. During that same period, there were just 467 prosecutions for modern slavery-flagged crimes in England and Wales, of which three quarters resulted in a conviction.

It is bitterly disappointing to see that a Labour government elected to give workers a new deal, is upholding an immigration system that breeds modern slavery, and lets rogue employers get away with abuse. 

More recently, the government actively turned against migrant communities, with a plan to double the time foreign nationals must spend in the UK before they can settle from five years to 10 years.

They argue this would reduce migrant numbers and ensure people speak reasonable English before acquiring permanent residence. But migrant numbers are already declining, and the government’s own data suggests the majority already speak English very well when they arrive.

The proposed changes will make little impact on integration, which is already happening. They will just double the time migrants spend on precarious employer-sponsored visas, and penalise businesses that rely on migrant labour.

Migrant workers account for up to 30% of jobs in hospitality, and 22% in communication and IT, according to data from the Migration Observatory. The changes to settlement rules, on top of recent amendments to sponsorship rules, now mean decent businesses wishing to hire foreign nationals face higher recruitment costs, for longer.

It is no secret that the Labour government is trying to mitigate the risk of losing the next election to the far-right Reform UK party by emulating ever more of its politics. But making life harder for migrants will not magically make life better for British citizens. 

In fact, it is almost certain to undermine the government’s other strategic objectives to spur growth, build housing for a generation of Britons, care for elderly people, and eradicate modern slavery. Labour must put these interests first. At a time when migrants contribute to every aspect of our society, the stakes of getting immigration policy right have never been higher.