Agency boasted of misleading the Home Office

A MEDICAL agency said that it would deceive British authorities to help migrant workers get visas to travel to the UK.

London-based Medilives advertised a ‘one-month intensive Caregivers training and job placement program’ to ‘enable interested participants to become certified Care Givers in the UK’ to coincide with the relaxation of visa laws in 2022.

It added: ‘The training upon completion would provide immediate job placement, visa extension and migration service for all certified trainees.’

In weekly Zoom meetings, usually attended by 500 people at a time from Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe and the Philippines, potential recruits were openly told the company would mislead the Home Office to help them obtain visas to get to Britain.

In a recording of a meeting, obtained by the Mail, a woman called ‘Dr Vicky’ from the company said migrants would first have to complete a month-long training programme carried out in the UK and then be placed with a care home.

‘We do have places for all of you because the vacancies are so many, so all of you will be placed for sure,’ she said.

She said the package, costing between £ 2,000 and £ 5,000, included official invitation letters from Medilives to help them obtain initial UK visas, but these would give false information about how long the applicant planned to stay to ‘avoid extra problems’.

With these they would be given a visa to stay for several months after which it would be possible to transfer to a Health and Care visa, she said.

‘These few months will be enough for you to finish your training to get your placement and to change your visa from the health and care to the work permit.

‘So the visa they give you will be enough to cover it.’

Once they get their work permit their children under 16 would be able to study for free in UK schools and their spouse or long-term partner could also work here, she said.

She added: ‘ We have arranged everything. If you have been thinking, considering, dreaming, planning on coming to the UK ... Medilives has provided you with this opportunity ... Everything we are doing is legal.’

Medilives boss Sunny Ahonsi, who joined the 2022 meeting after most of ‘Dr Vicky’s’ comments, said the company was not a ‘recruitment’ firm but a training company.

But he added: ‘There are certain things that even the Home Office, people who work in the Home Office, do not know’ and described how Medilives’ partners were ‘willing [and] able to place you in the workplace when you come’.

Mr Ahonsi told the Mail: ‘ We do not promise employment in the UK labour market, but a training programme leading to a UK-recognised qualification that certifies someone as a Senior Carer Assistant and provides them with an opportunity to apply for a Senior Care Assistant job in the healthcare industry in any part of the globe where this role has been added to the shortage of job skills.’

Although soliciting payment from workers for the purpose of finding them a job is illegal, charging for non work-finding services such as training is not.

‘We have arranged everything’