Record 616,000 visas for foreign workers and their families

THE number of foreign workers handed permission to come to Britain by the Home Office surged to a record high last year.

More than 616,000 visas were granted to overseas workers plus their dependants – soaring 46 per cent year-on-year, new figures show.

Across all types of visas – excluding tourists and other visitors – the Home Office granted permission for 1.4 million people to come to Britain, marginally higher than in 2022 but nearly triple the 519,000 a decade earlier.

Meanwhile, family visas – used to bring foreign-based relatives to the UK – were up 72 per cent to 81,000.

And although the student visas total was down five per cent to 457,000, the number of former foreign students who extended their stay in Britain by securing a graduate work permit was up 57 per cent to 114,000.

Former home secretary Suella Braverman described it as a ‘national disaster’ and called for a cap on numbers.

‘Work and student visa numbers, including many dependants, are appalling,’ she posted online.

‘This cannot go on: we don’t have enough homes, GPs or schools to

‘Completely out of control’

support this level… Britain will be unrecognisable if this carries on. It’s not what the British people, including me, voted for.’

Alp Mehmet, chairman of Migration Watch UK which campaigns for tougher border controls, described the figures as ‘astonishing’, adding: ‘Immigration remains completely out of control.’

Last year’s 616,000 foreign worker visas topped the previous year’s 422,000. It included a 26 per cent year-on-year leap in the main holders of foreign worker visas to more than 337,000, plus an 80 per cent jump in the number of family members they were allowed to bring to the country, to 279,000.

The surge in foreign workers was driven by a 349 per cent rise in care worker visas to just over 89,000, with the largest numbers coming from India, Nigeria and Zimbabwe.

Director of Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, Dr Madeleine Sumption, said the surge was being driven by demand in the public sector.

‘When [EU] free movement ended, the Government said that employers would have to adjust,’ she said.

‘It turns out what this meant was that other employers would have to adjust, and not the Government.

‘Where workers are directly or indirectly employed by the Government, there has been much less enthusiasm to restrict.

‘This has meant the public sector has increasingly dominated the skilled work visa system.’

Only seven per cent of work visa applications were refused by the Home Office. Home Secretary James Cleverly has already announced a number of changes designed to drive figures down – including a bar on care workers bringing relatives here – but their impact remains to be seen.

Research director at the Centre for Policy Studies think-tank, Karl Williams, said: ‘The pressures from record migration – on schools, hospitals, and on housing – show no signs of abating.’

On illegal migration, the data showed that just two per cent of migrants – 2,580 people – who arrived by small boat since 2018 and the end of last year have been removed from Britain. Over that period the total number of arrivals was more than 114,000.

A record 62,336 people were granted asylum or humanitarian protection last year – the highest figure since records began in 1984.

The number of migrants housed in hotels at the taxpayers’ expense was down 18 per cent to 45,768 at end of December, from 56,042 three months earlier.

The new figures came the day after at least three migrants perished in the Channel.

Mr Mehmet said: ‘The tiny number of returns of small boat arrivals is the main reason why illegal immigration will continue unabated.

‘As the law stands, it would be naive to expect an end to the flow of illegal boat crossings.

‘ More will come and, sadly, more will die in their attempts to get here.’