Are migrant workers exploited by employers in the UK?

The immigration laws in the UK are putting migrant workers at greater risk of being exploited. The Work Rights Centre (WORC) has released a report that examines the ways in which the immigration laws in the UK increase the risk of exploitation that migrant workers face.

Advisors from the Work Rights Center are accredited by the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner – UK (OISC) to provide immigration advice and possess the Advice Quality Standard for Employment.

The report, which is based on more than 40 case studies, caseworker interviews, and policy analysis, concludes that, in the absence of immediate changes to the immigration and labor enforcement systems, migrant labor exploitation runs the risk of becoming a national crisis.

WORC reports that the vulnerable migrants are being forced by their sponsors to accept exploitative work conditions due to the short time frame, high cost, and administrative difficulty involved in changing jobs is what the report found out.

The ‘new’ Points Based immigration system (PBS) introduced after Brexit makes most migrants’ right to come to the UK to work contingent upon holding a job offer from an employer licensed by the Home Office. This aspect of the PBS, which is referred to as the ‘work sponsorship system’, severely limits migrant workers’ abilities to change employers, preventing them from reporting labour exploitation, and increasing the risk that they accept precarious work conditions.

To illustrate this, the report draw on a harrowing case study of four Indian nurses who were scammed into paying over £20,000 each for a Health and Care Worker visa, but who are unable to report the scam for fear that doing so will lead to their visas being curtailed.

With just 60 days to change sponsors and obtain a new visa, many are reluctant to report exploitation for fear that doing so will lead to their visas being cancelled. This allows unscrupulous employers to operate with impunity, comfortable in the knowledge that the Home Office is unlikely to ever investigate.

The report states, “The number of businesses licensed to sponsor migrant workers has more than doubled over the past three years, but the Home Office appears unlikely to provide the oversight needed to regulate them.”

The report also recommends that workers who are exploited by their sponsor be granted the unrestricted right to continue working for the duration of their visa, and that sponsored migrant workers be granted more time than the current 60 days to switch employers.