BIG BAM

Care workers on the Health and Care visa, here is where you stand after this afternoon's settlement statement in the Commons. If you joined before the Immigration White Paper of May 2025 and kept your visa conditions, including earning at least £25,000 a year in the sector, your five-year route to settlement stays. If you fell short of those conditions, you can apply for another five-year care visa, no longer tied to your old employer. Hold a legitimate care job through it and you can apply for settlement again. The Home Secretary put this group at around a quarter of those who entered or switched into the route between 2022 and 2025. Five years also stays open to anyone earning more than £50,000, and to doctors, nurses and teachers. Similar protection reaches some public sector health and education workers, auxiliary nurses among them. Everyone else, including those earning under £50,000, moves to a ten-year path. An immigration breach pushes settlement back to twenty years. Applicants will also need a clean criminal record, English to a high standard, no unpaid debt to the taxpayer and at least three years of National Insurance contributions. Miss one and you are disqualified. There is no start date yet, and no word on dependants. This story is still developing, and some details may change. What you have read here comes from Parliament's live subtitles, so the official parliamentary record may still correct the wording, and the written rules will fill in the rest. xx General information only, not immigration advice. For your own case, speak to a regulated immigration adviser or solicitor.