Thanks to John O for this information: 2 May 2024: Regret: Statement of Changes to Immigration Rules
Lord Oates: That this House regrets the Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules (HC 556), published on 19 February, in particular, the provisions preventing overseas care workers from bringing family to the United Kingdom, as this will
(1) deprive migrant care workers of the basic right of caring for their own children,
(2) increase workers’ dependency on their sponsors by removing the safety net of a Toggle showing location of partner’s income, and
(3) make it harder for workers to report and change sponsors, increasing the risk of exploitation.
Before I go into further detail on this point, I express particular regret at the notion that carers arriving in the UK will no longer be able to bring their children with them. This troubles me deeply. We are asking care workers to care for our loved ones, but we are denying them the right to do the same in respect of their own children and partners.
Read more: Lord Oates, https://shorturl.at/bjtW6https://shorturl.at/nxALW
Government: Immigration Update
Tom Pursglove Minister of State at the Home Office
The Government are committed to reducing immigration—both legal and illegal—into the United Kingdom. Legal immigration has risen in recent years in part because we have extended the hand of friendship to people fleeing conflict and persecution in Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan. That was the right thing to do. But another factor has been the numbers of overseas students and workers and their dependants rising to unsustainable levels. The steps that the Secretary of State for the Home Department, my right hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (James Cleverly) announced last year to cut net migration will mean that around 300,000 people who would have been eligible to come to the UK will now not be.
We have restricted most students from bringing dependent family members, increased the salary that most skilled worker migrants need to earn in order to obtain a visa by nearly 50% to £38,700, stopped overseas care workers from bringing dependent family members with them, raised the minimum income for family visas to ensure that people are supported financially, and scrapped the 20% going rate salary discount for shortage occupations and replaced the shortage occupation list with a new immigration salary discount list. The latest estimates from the Office for National Statistics show that net migration in the year to June 2023 was 672,000, 73,000 lower than it was six months earlier. The figures are provisional and we need to go further, but these are encouraging signs.
Read more: Hansard/Parliament, https://shorturl.at/pHQUXhttps://shorturl.at/iDJNQ