New UK Immigration Rules may Hit Filipino Nurses
MANILA: More than 3,000 foreign nurses, including Filipinos, outside the European Economic Area (EEA) fear deportation from the United Kingdom due to new immigration rules, media reports said.
GMA News quoted the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) as saying that around 3,365 nurses in the UK may be affected by the new migration cap demanding non-European nurses to earn at least £35,000 after six years of employment.
In case the new immigration rules are pushed to be implemented from next year, the number of affected nurses will climb to 6,620, recruited at a cost of £39.7 million, by 2020, said Skynews in a report.
Data from the Nursing & Midwifery Council indicate that the Philippines has the highest number of foreign health workers in the UK at more than 20,000 nurses in 2015, a BBC report pointed out.
RCN general secretary Peter Carter was quoted as saying that most nurses earned “nowhere near” the required amount and were paid between £21,000 and £28,000 a year.
National Health Services (NHS) and RCN data, meanwhile, showed that these nurses must be promoted to a senior nurse position or made either a nurse consultant or matron to make the required £35,000, GMA News reported.
A Huffington Post report, meanwhile, suggested that the Home Office, the UK’s immigration office, wants to implement the policy to reduce the demand for migrant labor and had given hospital four years to adjust to the changes.
“We changed the settlement rules in 2011 to break the link between coming to work in the UK and staying here permanently,” a Home Office spokesman was quoted as saying.