The reforms to the UK’s immigration system deny our reliance on migrant workers and will create a revolving door of temporary workers with few options. This drives exploitation

Today, the Home Office has announced plans to implement key parts of the recent Immigration White paper which, subject to parliamentary approval, are planned to take effect from 22 July 2025. 

The assertion is that these changes will ‘restore order and control’. In fact, by denying the UK’s reliance on migrant workers, and by creating a new, interim, temporary shortage list (alongside the existing immigration salary list), the changing system will only introduce greater chaos. 

It will create an ever-more temporary migrant workforce, who, due to immigration restrictions, will not be able to access the same rights as other workers. This will drive exploitation and undermine workers’ rights. More people will be abused and exploited at work – all at the same time as the Employment Rights Bill is passing through parliament.

The measures announced are to:

• Remove 111 occupations from being eligible for Skilled Worker visas by raising the skills threshold to graduate level or equivalent
• Close the Social Care Worker visa route to new applicants 
• Open a temporary shortage list, in addition to the immigration salary list, for ‘targeted’ roles below degree level. The statement emphasises these sectors will have to ‘grow domestic skills’
• Commission the Migration Advisory Committee to renew the temporary shortage list

These changes have not been widely consulted on, and have failed to learn from the lived evidence of those in immigration systems. Take the care workers who came to the UK, only to find themselves in debt bondage, with multiple dependencies on unscrupulous employers who were also their visa sponsor. 

The Home Office asserts that these changes will restore order and control, as well as tackle exploitation. However, past experience show clearly and repeatedly that by pushing workers onto ever more temporary and restrictive immigration routes, creating multiple dependencies on individual employers for work and immigration status, and without pathway to settlements, they will only pave the way for exploitation. 

Immigration restrictions enable exploitation.

The conditions in which exploitation can thrive are created when workers have little power and few practical options. It is exacerbated by the low levels of proactive labour market enforcement in the UK, with workplaces rarely being inspected. Even worse is that there are so few options for practical redress available to workers. If workers understand that challenging poor working conditions will leave them worse off than staying silent, they are unlikely to speak out. Temporary or restrictive visa regimes are defined as systems where workers have paid significant amounts to migrate, where their visa is dependent on that employer, and where they have no recourse to public funds so would quickly become destitute if dismissed are a massive disincentive to questioning confusing payslips or a lack of annual leave. Given these miserable choices, workers are most likely to ‘carry on’ until the exploitation escalates to a point of serious exploitation such as trafficking or modern slavery. 

Rather than looking to build safer migration systems, the Home Office statement’s only attempt to address exploitation is by stating that the response to signs of ‘abuse and exploitation’ will be to ‘restrict immigration access further’. The threat often used to exploit workers on restrictive work visas is that the worker already has become, or will become irregular, or undocumented if they leave. We have seen with migrant care workers that when complaints result in an immigration sponsor’s sponsorship license being revoked, workers are doubly punished and left in limbo. Without measures such as a bridging visa like Australia’s Workplace Justice visa, combined with secure reporting pathways, workers who are dependent on their employer for immigration status will not jeopardise this. 

More specifically, closing or limiting an immigration route does not make exploitation in that sector disappear — it pushes it further out of sight. The original Overseas Domestic Worker visa was introduced in 1998  following decades of campaigns by migrant domestic workers themselves for status which recognised them as workers. Migrant domestic workers identified a visa which recognised them as workers as being key to addressing  the exploitation of domestic workers who had previously entered a ‘concession’. This left domestic workers who entered with their employer to be treated as undocumented if they left. Domestic workers were supported by the then Transport and General Workers Union (now Unite) in this ask for a work visa and the visa was recognised by the ILO as good practice. Similar issues exist with the use of the Code 7 transit stamp in fishing where migrant fishers on UK vessels are in breach of the immigration rules if they are working within UK waters. 

When immigration policy ignores labour realities, it doesn’t end exploitation; it enables it.

To seriously address exploitation, workers in these sectors need to know they will be treated first and foremost as workers. They need to be able to change jobs without first evidencing exploitation to a certain threshold.  If a worker has ongoing employment they should be able to apply to renew their visa. None of these are particularly generous measures; they are the minimum we need to avoid a two tier workforce, with sectors where workers have no options and exploitation thrives.

The government will never be able to counter exploitation by driving workers underground.