Migrants currently working in social care are due to be spared from having to wait 15 years to qualify for permanent residency.
The Home Secretary will unveil the Government’s long-awaited changes to indefinite leave to remain (ILR) on Monday, with the proposals set to be watered down for care workers who are already in the country.
It comes as research shared exclusively with The i Paper shows that the number of overseas care workers is on track to plunge by more than 90 per cent compared with just three years ago, despite rising demand and a fall in the number of British starters in the sector.
Mahmood has proposed extending the wait before someone qualifies for ILR from the current five-year threshold to 10, with some lower-paid migrants including care workers having to wait 15 years under her original plans.
Crucially, the measures are supposed to apply retrospectively, meaning those already in the country would have to wait longer than they were expecting.
The final measures will be confirmed by the Home Secretary in Parliament this week, with Mahmood expected to dilute the rules for care workers following opposition from Labour MPs, including the Housing Secretary Angela Rayner.
As a result, social care workers already in the UK are now expected to be exempt from the 15-year wait. However, most other workers will have to live and work in the country for 10 years before becoming eligible for ILR, as originally proposed.
Between 2022 and 2024, more than 600,000 workers and their dependents moved to Britain on health and care visas, with more than half of them expected to apply for indefinite leave to remain when they become eligible from next year.
Concerns have previously been raised that a 15-year requirement for existing carers could prompt many overseas workers to leave the UK, exacerbating staffing difficulties in the sector.
According to new analysis by The King’s Fund think-tank, the number of overseas care workers is already in steep decline.
If current trends continue, only 10,000 overseas care workers will be recruited this financial year – less than a tenth of the number in 2023-24.
The King’s Fund found that nearly half (47 per cent) of new starters in care work in 2025-26 were of international origin, far above the 18 per cent recorded in 2020-21 during the Covid-19 pandemic, when travel restrictions were in place.
However, overseas care worker recruitment has plunged from its peak of 105,000 in 2023-24 to 30,000 in 2025-26, with recruitment on track to fall further to 10,000 in 2026-27.
At the same time, the number of new British workers starting in the sector is also falling – with more now leaving than starting.
There were 140,000 new British starters in 2025-26, down from 255,000 in 2020-21, while 175,000 left the sector in the last financial year.
In 2025-26, there were just over a million filled posts in the sector and 65,000 vacancies. Demand will continue to rise because the population aged 65 and over is forecast to grow by 24 per cent to 14.1 million by 2040.
Danielle Jefferies, senior analyst at The King’s Fund, said: “The divergent trend lines of the growth in demand for care workers and the expected fall in new international recruits that the sector relies on, paints a bleak picture for where the social care workforce will be unless there is significant intervention from the government.
“The Prime Minister has shown ambition to address one the challenges of recruitment through ending ‘poverty pay’ but the sector will remain unattractive to domestic workers over the long term unless viable career paths are created.”
The Home Office declined to comment on the ILR announcement.
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