Africans Now Make Up the Majority of Foreigners Given the Right to Work in Britain’s Care System
A female water engineer in uniform providing support to an elderly woman in a care home.
The number of Africans entering Britain as care workers nearly trebled over the last year after visa rules were changed to tackle staff shortages exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and Brexit. It highlights the West’s growing reliance on migrants from the world’s youngest continent to care for its aging populations. Some 57,000 Africans entered the country on a Health and Care visa in 2023 — up from just over 20,000 in 2022 and more than half of the approximately 106,000 granted the right to travel to Britain for that work, Semafor Africa’s analysis of newly released Home Office data shows. Britain’s government in December 2021 added care staff to a list of occupations for which visas would be granted to address a shortage of workers which rose sharply during the pandemic.
SOURCE: SEMAFOR