Why Immigration Reforms Will Devastate Social Care
Joe Desmond, Director at Recruit2Care, warns that the government’s immigration reforms are a reckless attack on the care workforce and risk leaving providers to pick up the pieces.
The UK government’s latest immigration reforms, set out in the recently published White Paper, should set alarm bells ringing across the social care sector. These are not tweaks or technical adjustments—they are fundamental shifts in policy that threaten to destabilise an already fragile system. For care providers, leaders, and sector organisations, the message is stark: without urgent, collective action, the future of social care as we know it is at risk.
At the heart of the government’s proposals is the decision to close the Health and Care Worker visa route for new overseas applicants in adult social care. Alongside this, salary thresholds for Skilled Worker visas are rising, the Immigration Skills Charge is set to increase by 32%, and the route to settlement will stretch to 10 years. In theory, the government claims this will reduce net migration. In practice, it will choke off a vital workforce pipeline, leaving care providers scrambling to fill tens of thousands of vacancies with no viable alternative.
This is not just an immigration issue. It is a sector-wide crisis in the making—one that demands an urgent and united response from every part of the care sector.
Adult social care in England alone faces around 131,000 vacancies. International recruitment has been a critical tool in managing this shortfall, yet the government’s reforms seem to wilfully ignore this reality. It’s not as if the sector has been flooded with international workers—far from it. The number of Health and Care Worker visas issued is a fraction of overall net migration, and international recruits have consistently demonstrated higher retention rates than domestic workers.
The government’s argument that care providers should simply fill vacancies from the “existing pool” of overseas workers already sponsored is laughable. These are not static numbers. The sector is growing. Demand is increasing. The needs of people with learning disabilities, autism, mental health conditions, and dementia are becoming more complex. The idea that a fixed pool of workers can meet these rising pressures is not just naïve—it is a dangerous delusion.
What happens when the flow of international workers is turned off? The answer is brutally simple: care providers will struggle to maintain services. Waiting lists will grow. Existing staff will burn out under unsustainable workloads. The reliance on expensive agency staff will soar, driving up costs and eroding already thin margins. And as the financial pressure mounts, more providers will exit the market—leaving vulnerable people without the care and support they need.
This isn’t a theoretical risk. It’s a trajectory we’ve already seen, and the government’s immigration reforms will accelerate it. The Fair Pay Agreement and Employment Rights Bill, held up as long-term solutions, are years away from delivery—if they ever materialise. There is no credible plan to build a domestic workforce at the scale and speed required to replace international recruitment. The result? A sector stretched to breaking point, with providers left to pick up the pieces of a government failure.
Perhaps the most damaging aspect of these reforms is the narrative that underpins them. Care work is repeatedly dismissed as “low-skilled”—a term that betrays a profound misunderstanding of the sector. Delivering high-quality, person-centred care to people with complex needs is a skilled, demanding, and emotionally intensive profession. It requires knowledge, empathy, adaptability, and resilience. To reduce this work to a “low-skilled” category is not just insulting—it undermines the very foundation of care as a profession.
This language has consequences. It feeds a culture of undervaluing care work, making it harder to recruit and retain staff, whether from the UK or overseas. It reinforces the perception that care work is something anyone can do, for low pay, with minimal training. This is not the reality of modern care—and it’s not the workforce model that will deliver the quality of care people deserve.
The government has made its position clear. Now, the care sector must do the same. Silence is not an option. Providers, sector leaders, and representative bodies must push back—loudly and consistently—against policies that threaten the future of care. This is a moment for the sector to stand together: to challenge the myths about care work, to demand urgent investment in pay, conditions, and workforce development, and to reject immigration reforms that will make an already critical situation worse. We must call for a national workforce strategy that is honest about the scale of the challenge and is backed by meaningful funding and political commitment.
If we don’t, we face a future where the promises of person-centred care are hollow, where the system relies on a dwindling and exhausted workforce, and where the most vulnerable people in our society are left without the support they need.
These immigration reforms are not a technical adjustment—they are an existential threat to social care. The question now is whether the sector will fight back, or whether we will allow political expediency to dictate the future of care. The choice is ours. Let’s not waste it.