The drop is likely to reflect changes in legal migration rules introduced since January 2024 by the previous Conservative government, including a ban on overseas care workers and students bringing family dependants, and a steep rise in the salary threshold for skilled workers to £38,700.
Visas issued for health and care workers and their families have tumbled from 348,157 in 2023 to 110,833 last year – a fall of 68% – while the number of student dependants saw an even larger percentage drop, down 85% year-on-year from 143,267 to 21,976.
Christina McAnea, general secretary of the public service union Unison, described the drop in health and care worker visas as “worrying”, adding: “Without the support of workers from overseas, the social care sector would have collapsed long ago.
Dr Ben Brindle, researcher at the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, said: “The past few years have seen a ‘boom and bust’ in some visa categories, particularly students’ family members and health and care visas.
Nearly 935,000 visas were issued in 2024 to people coming to the UK for work, study or family reasons, or through one of the Government’s settlement schemes, according to new Home Office data.
