Olly sold her tourism business in Botswana after Covid-19 struck and paid almost £8,000 for visas and flights to take a job as a carer in the UK. The work was stressful enough, involving long miles between clients around rural Somerset in an unfamiliar manual car.

But in August, just weeks after her family joined her, her employer folded. She swiftly found another job in a care home willing to sponsor her visa, but is only allowed to work part-time while the Home Office processes the paperwork — and risks deportation from next week if the delay continues. “It is very difficult financially, because the savings I had got finished,” Olly said. “Right now we don’t know . . . if the Home Office will tell us to pack our bags and go.” Olly is one of hundreds of migrant care workers who have sought help over the past year from Unison, the largest UK union, after the job they had pinned their hopes on left them in acute difficulties. 

This is the group of workers ministers have in their sights as they seek ways to cut record immigration. Home secretary James Cleverly, under pressure from the right wing of the Conservative party, is reviewing options to reduce work-related migration that include higher salary thresholds and limits on the number of dependants care workers can bring.  Immigration through all channels — study, work-related and humanitarian — has surged since the pandemic, partly reflecting international trends that affect many advanced economies, and partly because of the design of the UK’s post-Brexit visa system. 

Other inflows are now slowing, but visa applications for care workers are still rocketing; more than 100,000 were granted in the year to September, according to official data, almost half the total of all skilled worker visas.  Unions and employers, however, argue that a clampdown on migrants and their families will achieve nothing and that ministers need to boost funding so that the care sector can pay enough to recruit and retain UK workers.  “The care system would implode without migrant care staff,” said Christina McAnea, Unison’s general secretary. “The government needs to reform immigration rules, not make them more draconian.” In a report published on Tuesday, the union detailed the experience of many other migrant workers who had taken care jobs in the UK only to find themselves underpaid, overworked, charged thousands in dubious fees, or stranded with big debts as their employer went bust. 

“We didn’t expect this kind of work. It is far better in my country,” said Nimesha, who sold her house in Sri Lanka and spent £12,000 on agents’ fees, visas and flights to come to the UK, with a further £2,000 loan for the car needed to cover the long distances between clients. The reality of the job has been crushing: she leaves home at 7am and is often on the road until 11pm, stumbling around in the dark trying to find the homes of clients for late-night calls. UK staff at the same agency work on much more flexible terms, she noted, and rarely at night. 

But with rent of £1,000 a month for a house shared with another family, it will take her years to earn enough to repay her debts and return home. Like the other workers interviewed by the Financial Times, she spoke under an assumed name because she could not risk antagonising her employer. The government’s Migration Advisory Committee recommended opening up entry-level care jobs to migrants in 2022 only reluctantly. It worried that workers in effect tied to their employer by the terms of their visa would be vulnerable to this type of exploitation.  Last month, MAC chair Brian Bell told ministers he was “increasingly concerned about the serious exploitation issues being reported within the care sector”. But he said employers should retain the ability to hire overseas for now, because the government had not addressed the underfunding that made it impossible to recruit at home.  Sir Julian Hartley, chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents health organisations across England, said the latest migration data showed how urgent it was to fund a plan to resolve the workforce crisis. 

An understaffed care system could not “keep relying on international recruitment to plug these huge gaps”, he said — but at present, overseas staff were essential “to keep it going”.  If ministers pressed ahead with proposals designed to cut migrant numbers — in particular, restrictions on bringing family — they would make workers’ lives harder without solving the sector’s problems, Unison said.  The union said their priority should be to vet recruitment agencies more effectively and make it easier for care workers to move job if their employer is exploitative or goes out of business. Those made redundant have just 60 days to find a new visa sponsor, and can only work 20 hours a week while they are waiting for an application to go through. 

Many migrant workers recently made redundant by another provider are keeping afloat only because they came to the UK with a partner who can also work, according to Patricia. The senior care assistant from the Philippines, whose earnings help her father pay for the medication he needs at home, also lost her job when her employer went into liquidation this month. She said her work began smoothly in 2021 but worsened over time, with staff often underpaid and asked to travel farther.  “I love domiciliary care, having conversations with clients . . . but I am traumatised now,” she said, describing 12-hour days in which she often drove more than 100 miles. She hopes a new job, with clients closer to home, will work out, if the Home Office approves the visa.  “I am lucky I found this company, because they care also about the carers, Without carers, who is doing the care?”

Source : Financial Times

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The State Department today launched a new visa restriction policy targeting individuals running charter flights into Nicaragua designed primarily for irregular migrants.  In a growing trend, charter flight companies have been offering flights—and charging extortion-level prices—that put migrants onto a dangerous overland path north to the U.S. border.  Many of these migrants lack a legal basis for entering or remaining in the United States and are often returned to their home countries, having wasted significant personal resources and put themselves and their families at risk.

As part of our comprehensive approach to addressing irregular migration, the U.S. government is taking steps to impose visa restrictions under INA 212 (a)(3)(C) against owners, executives, and/or senior officials of companies providing charter flights into Nicaragua designed for use primarily by irregular migrants to the United States.  These charter flights and their operators target migrants and put them in harm’s way.  We are also engaging with governments in the region, as well as the private sector, to seek to eliminate this exploitative practice.

We urge Haitian, Cuban, and other would-be migrants to seek out the many safe and lawful pathways available to migrate to the United States.  This administration has led the largest expansion of lawful pathways in decades, and continues to enforce consequences, including removal to their home country, for those who do not use these pathways to come to the United States and who lack a legal basis to remain. 

Source : US Departmen of State

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The group wants to focus on migration, law and order and ‘woke’ issues. Will No.10 listen?

LONDON — Watch out Rishi Sunak, there’s a new right-wing Tory pressure group in town.

The New Conservatives — a group of 25 MPs from the 2017 and 2019 parliamentary intakes — launched Monday with a headline-grabbing call for the Tory prime minister to do more to cut migration.

They’re urging Sunak — already under pressure over the issue — to focus on meeting his predecessor-but-one Boris Johnson’s 2019 manifesto pledge to get net numbers to below 226,000. So who are the New Conservatives? And what exactly do they want?

The new group is run by Danny Kruger, a former aide to Johnson, and Miriam Cates, a backer of Home Secretary Suella Braverman when she ran for the Tory leadership last year.

Other members of the group include backbenchers Tom Hunt, Jonathan Gullis, Gareth Bacon, Duncan Kaker, Paul Bristow, Brendan Clarke-Smith, James Daly, Anna Firth, Nick Fletcher, Chris Green, Eddie Hughes, Mark Jenkinson, Andrew Lewer, Marco Longhi, Robin Millar, and Lia Nici.

Lee Anderson, the pugnacious former Labour aide turned Tory deputy chairman, was conspicuously absent from the event — and all literature — despite being part of the group and billed to speak right up until late last night. Stand-in Kruger insisted “he’s unwell in bed” but also “doesn’t officially endorse policy proposals” due to his party role.

Eagle-eyed readers will note that this list does not tot up to the advertised 25.

When asked about this at the press conference, Hunt said there were a “wide group of MPs who are supportive of our work,” but that those listed are the ones specifically endorsing the migration policies presented today.

So what do they want?

Cates kicked off the group’s launch event in Westminster by making it pretty clear that the group’s immediate focus is on migration — though there’s clearly plenty more to come.

Her message to Sunak? “The choice is this: cut immigration, keep our promise to voters, and restore democratic, cultural and economic security, or kick the can down the road, lose the next election, and resign ourselves to a low growth, low-wage, labor-intensive service economy with a population forecast to rise by another 20 million in the next 25 years.”

The New Conservatives outlined a 12-point-plan Monday that they claim will do just that. But some of its key recommendations are likely to prove contentious.

Perhaps the most headline-grabbing point is a call to scrap Health and Care Visas, launched to fill gaps in the health and social care sector with overseas workers. The group says this will cut the number of new visas issued by 117,000 and reduce long-term international migration by 82,000.

But big questions remain over exactly how the resultant gaps in the health and social care workforce would be filled with British recruits. UNISON general secretary Christina McAnea said the government has “done nothing to solve the growing crisis in care. Now a group of its MPs want ministers to make things a whole lot worse.”

Beyond that pledge, the New Conservatives also want to reserve university study visas for only the “brightest” international students; stop overseas graduates staying for up to two years in the U.K. without a job; and place stricter limits on social housing being allocated to migrants.

They also want to “rapidly implement” the government’s Illegal Migration Bill, which — given its mauling in the House of Lords Monday — may be a tough ask.

Are they rivals to Rishi?

The group sternly rejects the notion that they’re here to cause trouble for the prime minister, with Daly telling assembled journalists Monday that he’s “depressed” by questions of rivalry.

Just to hammer the point home, Daly added that “every single person here today supports the prime minister.”

But they’re undoubtedly a thorn in Sunak’s side as the next election looms.

The prime minister’s official spokesperson insisted Monday that the government’s plans on migration don’t need toughening up. “We have to strike the right balance between tackling net migration and taking the people we need,” the spokesperson said, adding “we believe they strike the right balance currently. We keep our migration policies under review.”

Is this just about migration?

So far — but expect to hear plenty more from the group in the coming months.

Speaking to POLITICO, Hunt said he sees the group focusing on three main issues: migration; law and order; and what they see as the threat to Britain from “woke” ideas.

Hunt stressed that he wants the outfit to be “dipping their toes” into anti-woke issues “generally as a push-back, rather than waking up every morning and thinking ‘right, what’s our next big culture war wedge issue?’” So expect some anti-woke seasoning sprinkled on the New Conservatives’ main course.

Hunt says he’s animated by what he sees as “wokeness” in schools, and a preponderance of “self-loathing in this country.”

“I get concerned when I see the odd poll that says the majority of 18-25-year-olds see Churchill as a villain rather than a hero,” he said. That doesn’t mean the group will call for Britain to start “glossing over the past and saying we’ve always got it right,” he added — but recognizing that “in a struggle of Russia and China, we’re a damn sight better than them.”

So will this agenda help the Tories win in 2024 — or recover afterwards?

Polls suggest the Tories are on course to lose the next election, and badly. The New Conservatives want their ideas featured in the 2024 election manifesto, and believe they have the agenda to connect with working-class voters in the so-called Red Wall seats Johnson snatched from Labour in 2019 and which now look vulnerable.

Cates told the audience gathered in Westminster Monday that: “We want to win, of course we do, but it’s more than that. It’s because we believe that we still have, despite everything, the best chance of delivering for the British people.” She said of the party’s 2019 platform: “The demand for that offer is still there. We want to fulfill it.”

Not all Tories are convinced. Conservative commentator John Oxley argued that the New Conservatives’ impact may be short-lived.

It is, he said, “dominated by the sort of 2019, Red Wall MPs who are very likely to lose their seats next time around. They may be trying to sway the manifesto in a way that helps them, or mark themselves out as immigration hardliners to try and buck the national trend, but it seems unlikely to have much sway with Rishi Sunak.”

And he warned: “Equally, it seems unlikely this group will have much impact on the future of the Conservative Party, as so many of them will be out of parliament when that discussion begins after the election.”

Source: Politico

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The announcement came after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met his counterpart Anthony Albanese in Sydney on Wednesday.

The deal aims to “promote the two-way mobility of students, graduates, academic researchers and business people”.

They also discussed regional security amid rising tensions in the region.

India and Australia are part of the four-member Quad group, which also includes Japan and the US.

A scheduled meeting of the group in Sydney was cancelled last week after US President Joe Biden had to return to Washington for debt ceiling talks.

Mr Modi, however, continued his planned visit to Sydney after attending the G7 summit in Japan and travelling to Papua New Guinea.

This is Mr Modi’s first visit to Australia since 2014, and comes two months after Mr Albanese visited India in March.

Negotiations for the migration agreement had been going on for a couple of years. Australia already has a significant number of people who have migrated from India – census data shows that of more than a million people who moved to Australia since 2016, almost a quarter were from India.

According to a statement, the finalised migration agreement will also lead to the creation of a new scheme called MATES (Mobility Arrangement for Talented Early Professionals Scheme), which has been “specifically created for India”.

On Tuesday, the Indian prime minister said the two countries had also discussed increasing cooperation on mining and critical minerals and made progress in establishing an Australia-India Green Hydrogen Taskforce.

India and Australia are also working towards a comprehensive economic cooperation deal for which negotiations began more than a decade ago.

On Tuesday, thousands of people from the country’s Indian diaspora had turned up at one of Sydney’s biggest indoor stadiums, where Mr Modi was speaking at a rally.

“The last time I saw someone on this stage was Bruce Springsteen and he did not get the welcome that Prime Minister Modi has got,” Mr Albanese said at the event.

Mr Modi called the Indian community in Australia “a living bridge” between the two countries.

“The relationship between India and Australia is based on mutual trust and respect,” he said.

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