Modern slavery and exploitation within the social care sector in the UK have been on the rise following a 2022 relaxation of immigration rules to address staffing shortages. Since the change, investigators and advocates have highlighted compelling evidence of multiple types of exploitation, including excessive fees that agents charge for visas.

Now, through secret filming, the BBC has exposed recruitment agents scamming foreign nationals applying to work in the UK care sector. These rogue recruiters are getting workers to come to the UK for jobs that don’t exist. This leaves migrants far from home and vulnerable to modern slavery. 

“It has turned into a national crisis.” 

In 2022, the UK government expanded a visa scheme—originally designed for foreign medical professionals—to include care workers in response to massive staffing shortages in the sector. Ever since the expansion, reports of immigration scams and exploitation have been on the rise.  

Dora-Olivia Vicol, CEO of Work Rights Centre, a charity that helps migrants and disadvantaged people in the UK access employment justice, said: 

“The scale of exploitation under the Health and Care Work visa is significant, I think it has turned into a national crisis.” 

Particularly shocking in the secret recordings is the apparent ease with which unscrupulous agents are able to operate. And by illegally selling jobs in UK care companies, they are reaping massive profits. Sometimes they even devise fake payroll schemes to conceal that some of the jobs they are “hiring” for don’t even exist.

Once the worker arrives for one of the fake jobs, the recruiter moves them from care to other sectors, like construction. And occasionally, they simply abandon the migrants to fend for themselves after collecting their “recruitment fees.”

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