UNISON general secretary Andrea Egan hosted her first event in the Houses of Parliament on Wednesday 25 March alongside migrant worker members, calling for visa reform to prevent exploitation and proposing a sector-wide visa scheme to remove employers’ power to threaten deportation.
The event was attended by 36 MPs. Ms Egan championed UNISON’s calls to remove the retrospective application of a 15-year qualifying period for indefinite leave to remain, as well as to recognise the vital economic and social contribution of public service workers.
Ms Egan also urged MPs to invest in social care by proceeding with the Fair Pay Agreement as quickly as possible, while protecting the immigration status and workplace rights of existing international recruits and resolving salary threshold issues across public services.
Opening the event, Ms Egan pushed MPs to reverse proposed changes to indefinite leave to remain rules that UNISON says will negatively affect migrant workers across the UK. She warned that migrant workers were facing increasing exploitation under the current visa system. “Migrant workers are going through an extraordinarily horrendous attack. This cannot go on any longer,” she said.
“When I first heard the stories of abuse and exploitation facing those on visas, it shocked me to my core. These are conditions that I thought, in all my years in the trade union movement, were firmly in the past.”
Ms Egan explained that many migrant workers remain tied to problematic employers because of their visas, leaving them unable to leave even if they are underpaid or overworked. “If they speak out, they risk everything,” she said. “That is not justice. It’s exploitation by design.”
Addressing proposals to extend the time required to qualify for indefinite leave to remain, Ms Egan said the Labour government was “breaking the promise made to migrant workers before they came to this country”.
“We already have a struggling care sector, increasing waiting times across the NHS, and rising racism as the government feeds Reform rhetoric,” she said.
“This cannot be allowed to happen. Members won’t stop until this campaign is won, which is why we’re announcing a day of action on April 24.”
Addressing MPs directly, she added: “To those in power: we are not going away. we are not going away. We are organising, and we are growing.”
“Let’s be clear: there are 275,000 migrant workers in social care, and there are still over 100,000 vacancies. Removing these workers will only deepen the crisis.”
MPs and their representatives then heard first-hand testimonies from UNISON members about the challenges of life as a migrant worker in the UK.
Visa exploitation
“I never thought choosing a better life would come with so much pain,” Kidochukwu Ashibuogwu said. “I arrived in the UK full of hope, ready to work, ready to care, ready to do something meaningful. But from the very first day, before I even began working, I was told I had to buy a car.
That was the condition, even though it was not on the application form or mentioned in the interview. I had just arrived. We had sold everything we owned to relocate. I explained, I pleaded, I tried to make them understand, but there was no compassion. Just: ‘no car, no shifts’.”
Ms Ashibuogwu later discovered she had been reported to the Home Office for refusing to work.
“No one asked me what happened. There was no investigation, just a decision and 60 days to find a new sponsor or be deported.
“My husband and I were devastated, confused, and scared. There were nights we couldn’t sleep, full of anxiety, wondering what would happen to us.”
With the help of her community and church, she eventually secured a new certificate of sponsorship. Under the visa rules, she said she kept reminding herself that freedom would eventually come. “I told myself that in just five years, by 2028, I will be free.”
But last March her manager told her that the company’s licence had been revoked, forcing her to search for sponsorship again. “Everything became uncertain. The same feeling of life being completely out of control came back,” she said.
“When an employer fails in their duties, it’s the employees who pay the price. We’re the ones lying awake at night wondering how we will pay our rent.”
Salary thresholds leave workers living in uncertainty
Adekunle Akinola spoke about the financial salary thresholds set by the government, which determine whether workers can remain in the UK.
“The threshold last year was bumped up to £25,000. Many healthcare workers particularly in the NHS missed it by as little as £3,” he said. These are people doing extra shifts. Many of them earn £35,000 or £40,000, but that doesn’t matter because only the base salary is counted.”
He questioned why workers who had already built stable lives in the UK should be affected by new thresholds. “Why should somebody who is already settled here, living independently without access to public funds, with mortgages and investments, suddenly be affected by a new threshold?
“Who is looking at the impact of these decisions?” said Mr Akinola.
He warned that his workplace alone could lose up to 200 staff members because of the rules. “There are still 110,000 posts sitting vacant as of March 2025. No one is taking proactive steps to address these vacancies,” he said.
“Why do migrant workers have to live in anxiety every year wondering if the threshold will go up again? We earn more than enough to support ourselves. So why is someone setting a threshold that says we can’t continue with our visas?”
“Someone, somewhere, is trying to exert control. Let us create a system that does not put people’s lives in jeopardy.”
“We are not asking for sympathy – we are asking for justice”
Amenze Ogiemudia explained what she had left behind, in order to come to the UK to work, “I sit here not as an individual, but as a migrant worker who left 15 years of experience in the oil and gas industry to work as a care worker.”
She criticised proposed changes to the government’s “earned settlement” policy, which could apply new indefinite leave to remain requirements retrospectively. “It’s not just unfair – it undermines the very trust we have in this system, the ones you are inviting people to come to,” she said.
Ms Ogiemudia said many people had made life changing decisions based on the rules that existed to come to the UK. “Thousands of migrant workers came on a clear set of rules. We made life-altering decisions to work here and contribute to this country. “Based on those rules, we chose health and social care. We chose to help the NHS, to build our families here, and to contribute to this country.
“Then the very foundation we relied on is taken away from us. Our children will be in limbo. It feels like the goalposts are being moved after we had already started running the race.”
She also highlighted the financial burden many migrants face during the immigration process: “We support the most vulnerable people in our communities, while paying significant costs ourselves. I leave my children to work long hours. It has been like that since I came to the UK, and it is the same for many other migrant workers, because that is what we came here to do.
“We pay large visa fees, renewal fees and, for many, the immigration health surcharge over the course of our journey to settlement. Some will pay tens of thousands of pounds simply to live and work in the UK.
“We pay taxes. We pay national insurance. Yet we are not entitled to public funds, as it clearly states on our visas: ‘no recourse to public funds’.
“Migrant workers are not asking for special treatment. We are asking for fairness – a visa system that does not destroy lives, where we are seen and heard, treated as human beings and not disposable workers.
“We are not asking for sympathy. We are asking for justice.”
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