Published 14th Mar, 2024

By Tola Owoyele

On Monday, the government of the United Kingdom through its Home Office, imposed a ban on migrant health workers, forbidding them from using the work visas issued to them to bring their dependants into the country.

The ministerial department responsible for immigration, security, and law and order, described the decision as a crucial element of its strategy aimed at achieving the most significant reduction in migration in the UK.

Through the announcement, the Home Office also made it known that the 120,000 dependants who arrived the UK in the company of 100,000 migrant care workers in 2023 would no longer meet eligibility criteria under the new regulations.

With the new policy, migrant graduate students who recently obtained new visas as care workers and senior care workers in the UK are no longer permitted to stand as providers for their children and wards in the country.

The policy follows the recent restriction imposed on foreign students, preventing them from bringing their family members to the UK.

On Wednesday, FIJ interviewed some UK-based Nigerian health care workers to have their opinion on the new policy.

“A whole lot of Nigerian health workers who recently moved here (UK) are now affected by the new rule. It mostly affected Nigerians who had not got a sponsor job before the Home Office made the plan known to the UK public,” a Nigerian health worker in Southampton, who simply wished to be identified as Lucy, told FIJ.

“I would say I am a bit lucky in my own case. After I completed my studies, I was able to get a sponsorship job in the health care sector in late 2022, and that was even the reason I had to move from my former location to Southampton.

“I am also able to stand as a sponsor to the dependants I have under me because of my visa.”

For another Nigerian health care worker, who simply wished to be referred to as Wale, things will no longer be the same in terms of family bonds with the introduction of the new policy.

“My brother, I have been in the UK as a student for quite a while,” Wale told FIJ.

“The time the announcement was made coincided with the time I secured a job in a care home in Leicestershire. The new policy then means that I can no longer cover as a sponsor for my family members, especially my kids, as dependants.

“Let’s now even say my wife is also able to get a health care job in Birmingham, Wales or any other place in the UK, where will our children be?

“That simply means that we will be living apart. Where will our children be? Are we going to be living apart? This will divide us as a family. It will divide families!”

Raliat, a Nigerian student in North London, told FIJ that the announcement has forced her into having a re-think on her family’s future plans.

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“The announcement has forced me and my husband into having a new plan. We are both students and also have a son. Our initial plan was to look for jobs in the NHS once we were done studying,” Raliat told FIJ.

“As things are now, we may have to look in the direction of other countries whose migration laws would favour us and our son.”

Nigeria presently tops the list of UK emigrant health workers from Africa as the number of visas granted to its citizens rose from 8,491 in 2022 to 26,715 at the end of 2023.

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