After cutting migrant care workers and student visas UK now reviewing IT and engineering jobs

LONDON Aug 9: Foreign student and worker arrivals have dropped by more than a third this year as a result of a crackdown on legal migration instigated by the Conservatives. New figures show a 35 per cent decrease in visa applications for health and care staff, skilled workers and students between January and July compared with the same period last year.

The biggest fall has been among overseas healthcare staff wanting to work in the NHS or care homes, after the former Tory administration stopped them bringing their families with them. Applications for Health and Care Worker visas plunged by a massive 81 per cent between April and July this year, following the introduction of the restrictions in March, compared with the same period in 2023. There were only 2,900 main applicants in July, down from 16,200 a year earlier.

The Home Office statistics published yesterday also revealed a drop in international students since January when new rules came into force meaning they could not bring dependents except on postgraduate research courses. Sponsored study visa applications fell by 16 per cent from January to July last year to the same period this year, from 187,100 to 156,800. Applications for dependents dropped by a massive 81 per cent over the same period.

However Skilled Worker visa applications rose by 26 per cent between April and July this year compared to the year before, with a peak of 10,100 in April.

Now the UK government has signalled it wants to curb overseas hiring by technology and engineering companies after it asked its independent advisers on migration to review the sectors’ reliance on skilled worker visas.

Yvette Cooper on Wednesday asked the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) to investigate which roles in tech and engineering were suffering shortages, whether pay, training and conditions explained any shortfalls, and how employers had sought to adapt other than by hiring from abroad.

While the government was “very grateful for the contribution that people from all over the world make to our economy . . . the system needs to be managed and controlled”, the home secretary wrote in a letter to the MAC.

High levels of international recruitment reflected weaknesses and persistent skills shortages in the UK labour market, and “the system as it exists is not operating in the national interest”, Cooper added.

Cooper asked the MAC to report within nine months on how the immigration system “could be used more effectively” to spur employers to focus on recruitment from the domestic workforce. She noted that this could include changes to salary thresholds that are lower for some key roles seeing shortages at present.

Labour has pledged to cut immigration further — including when it comes through work-related routes — and wants to forge closer links between the MAC and its newly created Skills England body to create a pipeline of domestic talent to fill jobs where skills have perennially been in short supply.

Hiring in the tech sector accounts for about one in six of all skilled worker visas, with programmer and IT business analysts in particularly high demand, according to Home Office figures.