08 April 2024 , 19:06
489
0
Ministers say the salary changes will reduce Net Migration by 300,000
THE average salary of a migrant entering the UK with a visa fell from £42,884 to £32,946 in just two years, shocking report shows.
Despite the salary threshold for new arrivals being raised to £38,750 last week to try turn around out of control legal migration stats, social care workers are exempt.
Between 2021 and 2023 the number of entry visas awarded to professionals in the “Caring professional Services” has increased from just 4.3% in 2021 to 47.3% in 2023 - skewering the salary rules, according to the Centre for Migration Control.
Ministers say the salary changes will reduce Net Migration by 300,000, but critics say it is a gimmick while social care workers are exempt.
In the year ending December 2023 there were 228,799 skilled worker visas handed out to migrants - up from 79,995 in 2021.
A quarter of these were from the ‘nursing and midwifery’ profession with an average annual salary of £30,726.
The second largest group was ‘IT and Telecomm’ professionals which had an average salary of £48,655.
Care worker roles accounted for just four per cent of arrivals.
Yet by 2023, 47.3 per cent of work visas were for the ‘caring professional services’ sector.
Foreign employees can come on a salary as low as minimum salary of £20,960.
Robert Bates, Research Director at the Centre for Migration Control, said: “Since 2019 the Conservative government have done nothing to take back control of Britain’s borders.
“These findings show that their new visa system has actually made the problem far worse and is geared towards low-skilled migration that costs the country more than it brings in.
“The new immigration system that came into force on April 4 is a pure political gimmick that will do nothing to substantially cut the numbers, and the Home Secretary must surely know this.”