UK migrant carers 'owed huge sums' in visa scheme 'scandal'

• Exploitation has soared under carer scheme
• Rogue bosses lose sponsor licences
• About 40,000 migrant care workers in limbo

LONDON - When Zimbabwean sales rep Zola landed a job in Britain as a care worker she was excited about forging a new career, but the mother-of-three is now homeless, jobless and trapped in debt.

Labour rights experts say Zola is among tens of thousands of victims in an emerging national scandal that they say is a "shocking betrayal" by the government.

In 2022, Britain launched an initiative to encourage overseas workers to plug massive staffing shortages in its struggling care sector following the COVID pandemic and Brexit.

But reports of exploitation have soared, with rogue operators charging illegal recruitment fees and promising jobs to more people than they could employ.

In a crackdown on labour abuses, the government has banned hundreds of companies from hiring migrant workers.

But carers like Zola, who had already been recruited by these firms, are now in limbo and at risk of deportation unless they find a new sponsor.

"This should be recognised as a national crisis," said Dora-Olivia Vicol, CEO of the charity Work Rights Centre.

"It's a shocking betrayal of migrant workers who came here in good faith to work when Britain called for help," she told Context.

Read Zola's story: "I came to UK from Zimbabwe as a care worker, but ended up homeless"

The Work Rights Centre has been inundated with calls from desperate migrant workers this year, many facing destitution.

Vicol said they were owed "huge sums". The charity is calling for harsher penalties for employers who break the rules to help fund a compensation scheme.

If Zola's story is typical, Context calculated migrant workers like her would be owed hundreds of millions of pounds in lost earnings.

Illegal sponsorship fees

With no access to financial support or compensation, most care workers in Zola's situation are homeless. A few are sleeping rough, while others rely on friends.

"This has changed our lives," said Zola, 45, who asked to use a pseudonym for fear of repercussions.

"The government should be held accountable. I came here through the proper channels ... and now I'm treated like someone who came through the back door."

Zola, who arrived in Britain in July 2023, said she had paid 5,000 pounds ($6,752) for a company in the northern city of Leeds to sponsor her, unaware such charges are illegal. Other care workers report paying 10,000 pounds or more.

Her contract promised an annual salary of 20,480 pounds, but she was barely given any shifts, forcing her to borrow money to survive.

Zola believes her former boss had hired about 100 carers. If staff complained they were threatened with deportation, she said.

In March, the government revealed more than 470 companies had lost their sponsor licences since 2022, affecting about 40,000 migrant workers.

'Victims of fraud'

The government set up a job finding scheme for "displaced" workers in May 2024 and is encouraging care companies to hire them.

But research by the Work Rights Centre suggests just 3.4% of those signposted to the initiative were reported to have secured a job.

Vicol said the government response was "deeply inadequate".

"I think they're trying to bury the problem. At the end of the day, all these thousands of people are victims of fraud," she said.

"If we were talking about thousands of people who had booked a cruise that never materialised everyone would be screaming for a compensation scheme."

A spokesperson for the government said the job matching scheme was supporting thousands of care workers, but did not respond to questions about compensation.

Zola has not had any luck finding a job through the initiative or elsewhere.

She said companies providing home care often wanted driving licences, which many carers do not have.

Further obstacles facing carers include difficulties in supplying references and the cost of relocating to a new area.

'State-sponsored labour exploitation'

Vicol said the government had opened the gates to exploitation by setting up a system that tied workers to their sponsors through their visas.

It had also allowed care companies - including small inexperienced start-ups - to recruit large numbers of carers without checking they could provide sufficient work.

Care workers who lose their jobs have 60 days to find a new sponsor before their visa expires.

Labour unions and rights campaigners are calling for a new system to allow workers to switch employers within the care sector without putting their visa at risk, and an extension to the 60-day grace period.

Last month, the government said it would end care worker recruitment from abroad. Critics say the move is a knee-jerk reaction to the rise of anti-immigrant party Reform UK.

Jane Townson, CEO of the Homecare Association which represents domiciliary care providers, said the decision was shortsighted as there were still more than 130,000 vacancies.

She said a lack of funding was a major challenge.

Most home care services are purchased by local councils or the health service, but Townson said many public bodies did not pay care providers enough to even cover their labour costs at the minimum wage.

Providers were forced to compete for contracts which were awarded to the lowest bidder, squeezing out good employers.

But she said councils were driving down prices due to inadequate government funding.

"What we've got is state-sponsored labour exploitation," she added. "This is a public scandal."

The government spokesperson said it had boosted social care funding this year and would introduce a fair pay agreement for care staff under broader reforms.

But Townson said the pay agreement was a long way off and would not work without a big injection of cash.

($1 = 0.7405 pounds)

(Reporting by Emma Batha; Editing by Ana Nicolaci da Costa.)