"Migrant carers from India's Kerala await justice in UK visa 'scams',"

It took Arun George half a working life to scrape together £15,000 ($19,460) in savings, which he used to secure a care worker job for his wife in the UK.

But in barely a few months, he lost it all.

Mr George - not his real name as his wife doesn't want to be identified within their small community for the shame associated with having returned without a job - paid the money in late 2023 to the managers of Alchita Care.

The BBC has seen evidence of the payment to Alchita Care, the private domiciliary care home in Bradford that sponsored his family's visa. He did it at the behest of a local agent in his town in the southern Indian state of Kerala.

It was the promise of a better life for their child who has special needs that prodded the couple to dip into their savings and take such a risk. But when they got to the UK there was no work...

Mr George believes he has been scammed by the company and says the ordeal has set him back at least by a decade financially. His family is just one among hundreds of people from Kerala seeking work in the UK who have been exploited by recruiters, care homes and middlemen.

Most have now given up hope of getting justice or their money.

Alchita Care in Bradford has not responded to the BBC's questions. Their sponsorship licence - which allows care homes to issue certificates of sponsorship to foreign care workers applying for visas - was removed by the Home Office last year.

But at least three other care workers who sent thousands of pounds to Alchita Care and uprooted their lives from Kerala told us that the jobs they had been promised did not materialise...

In the town of Kothamangalam, the BBC spoke to some 30 people who had collectively lost millions of dollars while trying to obtain a care visa that allows professionals to come to - or stay - in the UK to work in the social care sector.

All of them accused one agent - Henry Poulos and his agency Grace International in the UK and India - of robbing them of their life savings through fake job offers and sponsorship letters.

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