Migrant workers in UK to fill care roles ‘charged up to £20,000’ in illegal fees

Migrant workers who come to the UK to bolster the country’s care system are having to share beds, sleep rough, and are in some cases being charged more than £20,000 in illegal fees, according to research.

A survey of more than 3,000 people who have travelled to the UK on health and care worker visas found that just under a quarter had paid fees to their employer or an intermediary upfront before coming to the UK, in return for the promise of a job.

More than 100 respondents, many of whom came to the UK from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Zambia and other parts of Africa, as well as India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Brazil and Indonesia, paid between £5,000 and £20,000 in fees, and 50 over £10,000. Five paid £20,000 or more.

Despite handing over such large sums, migrant care workers are often housed in overcrowded, substandard accommodation and face appalling levels of racism, the research shows.

Nearly a quarter of those in living in accommodation provided by their employer said they were obliged to share a bedroom with other workers. One said 15 people were staying in a one-bedroom flat, and another was among nine sharing a three-bedroom property. Many struggle to afford to pay their rent and bills and two care workers said they had to sleep rough at times.

Workers from overseas are seen as vital resource for plugging recruitment gaps in the UK’s creaking care system. Skills for Care estimates an average of 8.3% of social care roles in England were vacant in 2023/24, equivalent to approximately 131,000 vacancies. It also calculates that about one-third of new starters in the 2023/24 financial year were recruited internationally.

The survey by the trade union Unison also found widespread racism in the workplace. More than 800 people said they had experienced racism at work, with 355 reporting racism by their colleagues and nearly 300 by their boss.

Fear of reprisals prevents many migrant care staff from speaking out, according to the poll. More than a third of respondents said they or a migrant worker colleague had been threatened with dismissal or redundancy for raising issues about their treatment at work.

Care companies employing overseas staff must assign a sponsorship certificate to every migrant worker they employ, which is used to apply for a visa. According to latest government figures, there were 21,300 applications for health and care visas between April and December 2024.

But if a staff member decided to leave, or if their company goes bust, they can be at risk of being deported if they cannot get a new sponsor within 60 days.

Christina McAnea, Unison’s general secretary, said: “Care staff who come here from overseas are shoring up a crumbling sector. These workers should be treated with respect, not taken advantage of and abused. No one deserves to be treated in this despicable way.

“The government must overhaul the sponsorship system as a matter of urgency. This would help prevent exploitation and drive up standards across the care sector.”

Responding to the findings, Dr Shabna Begum, chief executive of the Runnymede Trust, said: “The racist treatment of migrant care workers, who are disproportionately people of colour, is symptomatic of the dreadful state of our broken care system. Chronic under-investment in the care sector has created a situation where the people who we rely on to care for our elderly and vulnerable are exploited and brutalised on Dickensian terms, by both the system of recruitment and then the conditions in which they are expected to work.”

Jamila Duncan-Bosu, a solicitor at the Anti Trafficking and Labour Exploitation Unit, a charity providing specialist legal support to survivors of trafficking and slavery, said: “Exploitation is baked into the systems which the UK uses to recruit migrant workers. Workers who are tied to an employer and reliant on them for their ongoing visa status are far less able to escape exploitation. The current system is a gift to those who seek to exploit migrant workers, as they can be certain that there will be little oversight or scrutiny of their actions.”