The UK government has stated that effective from spring 2024, skilled worker visa applicants must earn £38,700 ($48,900), up from the current £26,200 ($33,000) to obtain a work visa.
This stringent immigration reform aims to significantly reduce annual immigration numbers by hundreds of thousands.
This was facilitated by the Home Secretary James Cleverly who asserted the need for “robust action” to curb authorized immigration, which reached a record high of nearly 750,000 in 2022.
The new regulations stipulate higher income requirements for work visas and increased difficulty in bringing family members to the UK. The UK government also faces pressure to fulfil its objective of halting unauthorized asylum-seekers arriving via small boats in the English Channel.
Nairametrics leans that exemptions for the health and social care sectors from the salary rule have been implemented, yet overseas care workers will no longer be allowed to bring dependent relatives.
Eliminate the 20% pay gap for immigrant workers
The government also plans to eliminate the 20% pay gap for immigrant workers in shortage occupation list sectors and restrict foreign graduate student’s ability to bring family members to the UK starting from January 2024.
These measures are expected to reduce eligibility for moving to Britain by 300,000 individuals in the coming years. The Conservative Party sees cutting immigration as pivotal, while critics, including Unison trade union’s Christina McAnea, foresee detrimental impacts on health and care sectors.
Criticisms of the new regulations
According to McAnea,
- “Migrant workers were encouraged to come here because both sectors are critically short of staff. Hospitals and care homes simply couldn’t function without them.
- “Migrants will now head to more welcoming countries, rather than be forced to live without their families.”
Reason for the high immigrant numbers
Opposition Labour Party immigration spokeswoman Yvette Cooper said the government had failed to train U.K. workers to fill key jobs hence a high number of immigrants which the government now needs to cut down.
- “Where is the workforce plan on social care, on engineering, on bricklaying, on all shortage occupations that their total economic failure has left us with?” she said.
