Thousands of migrant care workers have been threatened with deportation, despite doing nothing wrong, after the Home Office took enforcement action against their employers.

In one case, a brother and sister from India who paid a recruitment agency £18,000 to secure care jobs in the UK, only to find they had been scammed, were told they must find another company to sponsor them in 60 days or leave the country…

…An investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Observer has found that 3,081 care workers had their certificates of sponsorship cancelled by the Home Office in 2022 and 2023.

In 94% of cases, the reason for the cancellation was that the company that hired them had its right to sponsor workers revoked…

The findings have prompted calls for reform of the tied visa system for care workers and demonstrate how workers are suffering for their employers’ actions – first exploited or given overblown promises, and then threatened with deportation by the government.

Aké Achi, the founder and chief executive of Migrants at Work, which supports people on work visas, said the Home Office was penalising people who had “followed the rules”. “They’ve been punished twice,” he said…