Explained: Why Indians would be the hardest hit by UK's new immigration plans

UK’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer said last week that his country “needs to reduce immigration significantly” and “take back control” of its borders to “close the book on a squalid chapter” of the country's politics and economy.So, he said, the UK will tighten “every area of the immigration system — work, family and study” — and released a white paper on its immigration plans. That document is a blueprint for what the government wants to do. But if it did go through with the plan, in exactly the form that has been announced, the impact of the changes would be felt most deeply by Indian applicants — given that about one in five immigrants headed for the UK is from India.#1 Time for which graduates can stay on would be reduced from 24 months to 18 monthsWhy the UK wants to do it: “Too many graduates allowed to stay in the UK following the successful completion of their studies are not moving into the graduate level roles for which the graduate visa route was created.”It would mean: Less time to find work in a weakening job market. The UK had introduced the graduate visa route in 2021, allowing international students to extend their stay while they looked for work. But, it says, only 30% of graduate visa holders end up holding high-skill jobs that match their qualifications.That’s relevant to India. A UK government survey published on the same day as the white paper said that the largest group of students allowed to stay after completing their studies was from India (42%). India has been the second largest source of international students in the UK (after China) for at least two decades, during which time its share in the UK study visa pool has gone from 10% to 22%.But while Indians are among those most likely to look for a skilled worker visa while they waited (81%), they were also the most likely to report that “applying for jobs was difficult” (80%). #2 The qualifications required for a skilled worker visa would be raisedWhy the UK wants to do it: “Too many sectors have remained reliant on international recruitment instead of being able to source the talent they need here in the UK.”It would mean: Some 180 jobs might no longer be counted as skilled work.The skilled worker visa was introduced at the end of 2020, and employers who sponsor people for this visa say they usually do this because there aren’t enough skilled UK candidates or because there aren’t enough candidates at all. Indians have led this list since the visa was launched. They are also the second largest group likely to take this route so they can live in the UK (at 77%, behind only the Philippines at 83%). But a little under 60% of Indians with this visa work in professional occupations. The share of people with skilled worker visas who take up managerial or professional work positions dropped from 83% to 49% over the past four years. And in the last quarter of 2023-24, for which the country-wise breakdown of occupations is available, more than a quarter of Indians (27%) with skilled worker visas had taken up work in skilled trade, care work, sales, machine operation or other elementary occupations. #3 Social care visas, meant for low-wage care jobs, would endWhy the UK wants to do it: “Vacancies in the social care workforce are largely driven by historic levels of poor pay and poor terms and conditions leading to low domestic recruitment and retention rates.”It would mean: A significant route for Indians to the UK might be closing. In 2020, the UK had launched the health and care worker visa to speed up the arrival of medical professionals during the pandemic. In 2022, as vacancies shot up, it expanded the visa to cover social care workers — home care workers, support workers, and so on. The visa brought those vacancies down, but a significant 131,000 posts still lie vacant because of the low pay.The specific breakdown for international workers who got social care visas is not available (yet at least). But the year it was introduced, in 2022, the number of people in the UK on health and care visas (whose subset it is) more than doubled — “explained”, the UK government says, “by the extension of the route to care workers”. And Indians had the largest share, almost one-third. The numbers — both of Indians and overall — tapered off in 2024, after the government banned care workers from bringing their immediate family. In those three years, some 71,500 Indians got health and care visas, as main applicants, and far more Indians, about 1.1 lakh, got visas as their dependants. #4 Dependants would have to prove English language proficiencyWhy the UK wants to do it: “Without adequate language skills, there is a risk of isolation as well as poor integration.”It would mean: An adult family member who can’t speak English won’t be able to join, as a dependant, someone studying or working in the UK.So far, there was no English language test for adult dependants of those on study or work visas. Now, there is. The British system identifies six levels of English language ability, and dependants have to prove their usage is at a basic level — of understanding and using familiar expressions and phrases. (Dependant visas are for those tied to temporary work or study visa holders, family visas are for those tied to British citizens or settled persons.)The white paper says that while 83% of graduate visa holders speak English well, only 73% of their dependant partners can say the same. And it cites an English proficiency index to profile dependants on the basis of the countries they come from — that index places India at the 69th position. The reason it might not be a problem? The last UK census showed that of the nearly 1.9mn Indians living in England and Wales, a little over 5% can’t speak English. But Indians have accounted for the largest share of dependant visa holders, by far, for at least the past two decades for which data are available. So, it is a large and varied pool for which sweeping conclusions about language proficiency wouldn’t be fair. Also, language is just one way to raise barriers against the entry of spouses and children — the UK government has already stopped the entry of dependants tied to health and care workers and international students pursuing anything less than postgraduate research. #5 The wait for settlement, or permanent residency, would be doubled to 10 yearsWhy the UK wants to do it: “People should contribute to the economy and society before gaining settled status in our country.”It would mean: More costs, and longer dependence on employer sponsorship.The indefinite leave to remain, or settlement, is the first step to becoming a British citizen. The 10-year wait had been part of a specific category of settlement, called the “long residence”, but could now be extended to most other settlement routes for which a five-year period used to be enough to qualify.Indians have been the largest beneficiaries over the past two decades (both including and excluding asylum as a form of settlement). The family route, for someone whose immediate family is a British citizen or has a settlement grant, is the most common path (accounting for 54% of Indians who got settlement grants). In 2023, the last year for which data are available, more than a quarter of those on the family route went to people who completed their qualifying period together with their spouse. Which ties in with how dependants and main applicants often plan their migration together. #6 But ‘highly skilled’ people might find it easier to get inWhy the UK wants to do it: “The race to attract the most desirable talent is fierce.”It would mean: More visas for “high talent”, faster visas for people with skills in sectors that the UK needs.The primary channels for this would be through the Global Talent and High Potential Individual (HPI) visas. Fewer than 6,000 were given out last year. And applicants from India have received the third highest number of these visas — behind the US and China — since they were introduced. (The Global Talent visa was introduced in 2020 to replace the pre-Brexit system, and the High Potential Individual visa was introduced in 2022.) Since no Indian institution is on the list of qualifying institutions for the HPI visa, no Indian who got the HPI visa had studied in an Indian institution — most had studied in US institutions, followed by those in Singapore. They were also more likely to be male, postgraduate degree holders, who worked in managerial positions, and in the financial sector. Likewise, the Global Talent visa is a narrow space — for people who have won prestigious awards like the Booker or the Oscar or the Fields Medal, or for people who can get an endorsement that they are a “leader” or “potential leader” in academia, research, arts and culture or digital technology (like fintech or gaming or AI).It’s a tiny opening, but one that’s expanding. boxcontentCould the FTA help?A week before Starmer’s white paper, the UK and India had signed a Free Trade Agreement (FTA). One visa-related announcement to come out of it was the opening up of the contractual services visa route for yoga instructors, musicians and chefs which had not been open to Indians before. It’s capped at 1,800 a year. Another was about an exemption to employees of Indian companies working temporarily in the UK, who will not have to pay social security contributions for up to three years. But no increase in the number of visas.Why this is a loaded fixThe numbers Starmer leaned on to justify the plan to reduce immigration were from a peak — when net migration, or the difference between the number of people entering and leaving the country, crossed 900,000. That was in mid-2023. But by mid-2024, net migration had dropped to 728,000.When asked about the positive relationship between immigration and economic growth, Starmer said that the “link doesn’t hold on evidence”. While there are caveats to how this works — like the age at which a migrant comes in, the wages they earn, and whether they have dependants — the UK government-funded Office for Budget Responsibility says reduced migration generally reduces economic growth. The position is quite a deviation from what the Labour Party would have said earlier. The centrist-leaning Labour prime minister Tony Blair had said that a good rule of thumb to ask of a country is “are people trying to get into it or out of it?” — a statement repeated often in immigration debates. Now, as the anti-immigrant, far-right Reform UK made big gains in local elections earlier this month, Starmer said that the immigration system “seems almost designed to permit abuse” and by not “championing justice”, politicians are “contributing to the forces that are slowly pulling our country apart.”Stern words. From the same politician who had — in a campaign to lead the Labour party five years ago — said, “We welcome migrants. We don’t scapegoat them.”