An organization that supports migrant workers has launched a legal challenge against the government’s new policy to bar care workers from bringing children and partners to the UK, warning that it is “tearing families apart”.
According to Migrants at Work, care workers have to choose between family life with their children and partners or getting a job as a health or social carer in the UK – they can no longer do both. This is while social care workforce shortages are of profound concern in the UK.
The legal action argues that the policy is discriminatory on various grounds including sex, race and is in breach of the public sector equality duty. It claims the home secretary has failed to take into account the needs of care sector workers.
Carers who want to come to the UK are now facing an invidious choice: either they take up a job that will contribute to the delivery of social care at a time of crisis in the UK, or they continue living with their children and partners. The new rules will not allow them to do both.
There are also cases where prospective care workers have been told they have to leave the UK since the new rules have come in, on the basis that their children are not permitted to stay in the UK as their dependants.
The new rules are already tearing families apart and the impact on the wider care sector will be disastrous.