The dirty secret of so many kebab shops that bring in 'skilled' migrant labour - DAVID BARRETT reveals horrifying truth of what's really going on

The kebab store is connected a scruffy and traffic-choked roadworthy successful London's East End.

Its garish reddish exterior – reminiscent of thousands of different fast-food joints astir the state – advertises inexpensive 'meal deals' alongside its halal credentials.

On the menu, helpfully illustrated with photographs, the offers astatine Al-Farooq Kebabish see 1 portion of fried chickenhearted and fries for conscionable £2.

Three chefs were down the antagonistic connected 1 day this week, tending the rotating doner nutrient and baking flatbreads.

No uncertainty the store does a coagulated commercialized but, astatine archetypal glance, it does not look to beryllium a concern with planetary reach.

However, this unassuming small outlet connected Leyton's Lea Bridge Road has a astonishing secret.

It is 1 of the Home Office's licensed sponsors of 'skilled workers' which, for outgo of a £536 fee, bestows employers with trusted presumption and an quality to backmost overseas workers seeking to travel to Britain.

Businesses which instrumentality up the relation are warned that sponsorship is simply a 'privilege, not a right', and that they indispensable observe a bid of 'duties and responsibilities' to guarantee that migration laws are decently upheld.

Each exertion indispensable inactive beryllium considered by the Home Office, and carries a further fee, but for galore Britons it volition travel arsenic a astonishment that the powerfulness to sponsor migrant workers is not reserved for blue-chip companies oregon adjacent medium-sized firms.

More than 128,000 businesses populate the Home Office's list, including galore which bash not look to person large fiscal promise.

The astir caller Companies House accounts for Al-Farooq Kebabish's genitor firm, for example, listed its wealthiness successful 'capital and reserves' astatine a specified £897.

We can't accidental however galore migrant workers Al-Farooq Kebabish is sponsoring close present – it mightiness beryllium nary – due to the fact that the owners person truthful acold failed to respond to our enquiries.

Data obtained nether state of accusation by the Centre for Migration Control past period showed that immoderate different kebab businesses had sponsored inexplicably ample numbers of workers to travel to this country.

The idiosyncratic shops were not named, but 1 successful Bradford sponsored 14 migrants and different successful Birmingham backed 12. In all, 56 kebab businesses crossed the state had helped unafraid papers for overseas labour.

Do the migrants really extremity up moving successful the jobs elaborate successful their paperwork? Follow-ups are fewer and acold between, and determination is grounds that the skilled idiosyncratic visa is simply a means of getting into the state successful the archetypal place.

Last month, for example, an authoritative study revealed Britain has witnessed a 100-fold summation successful the fig of overseas nationals arriving present arsenic 'skilled workers' who past claimed to beryllium refugees.

Asylum applications by these visa-holders jumped from conscionable 53 successful 2022 to 5,300 successful conscionable the archetypal 10 months of past year. And earlier this week the Home Office revealed that visa overstayers – crossed each the categories of overseas workers, students and visitors – present marque up astir 40 per cent of each asylum claimants.

Troubling questions astir the contented of sponsorship are not confined to nutrient outlets. Far from it.

The Home Office maintains a database of roles eligible for overseas applicants done the skilled idiosyncratic visa. A abstracted database allows sectors experiencing peculiar recruitment shortages to wage specified workers 20 per cent little than the mean threshold of £38,700 a twelvemonth for a full-time employee.

Their minimum wage tin beryllium conscionable £30,960 a year, which is astir £6,500 beneath this country's mean salary. Care workers tin beryllium paid adjacent less, astatine £29,000 a year.

The Home Office's main skilled idiosyncratic visa list includes marketplace traders, 'canine beauticians' (also known arsenic canine groomers), curtain fitters and, possibly astir bizarrely, 'teachers of English arsenic a secondary language'. So, the UK is importing workers to thatch this country's autochthonal connection to overseas students. There are astatine slightest a twelve connection colleges listed arsenic sponsors.

'It's perfectly ludicrous that kebab shops are capable to import workers nether the pretence of being highly skilled,' Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp tells me. 'The Government needs to unopen that down immediately.

'It's besides utterly ridiculous to beryllium bringing successful overseas workers to thatch the English language. This madness needs to end.'

Under the existent system, overseas nationals tin use for a occupation connected the skilled idiosyncratic visa database if they tin find a sponsor blessed to corroborate their labour is required.

Crucially, the leader is obliged to marque lone token efforts to question applicants based successful Britain for a relation earlier they tin look abroad.

In 2020, arsenic they redesigned however enactment visas operate, the Conservatives scrapped the 'resident labour marketplace test', which required employers to advertise vacancies connected 2 approved platforms – successful newspapers, online oregon successful occupation centres, for illustration – for 28 days earlier being allowed to prosecute abroad.

Some Tories present admit this was 1 of respective errors which contributed to nett migration – the quality betwixt the numbers of migrants coming to unrecorded present semipermanent and those emigrating – hitting a grounds 906,000 successful the 12 months to June 2023.

Party person Kemi Badenoch has admitted that erstwhile successful authorities the Conservatives 'got it wrong'. Yet by respective cardinal measures, a precise unexpected assemblage is causing the top concern.

It is not the ubiquitous fast-food restaurants. It is not the crop-picking jobs which person a agelong past of debased wage and mediocre conditions.

It is not adjacent the manus car washes wherever somewhat intimidating gangs of young men connection motorists a pitchy lavation and a hitch down with a soiled chamois for £10, 'cash only'.

Instead, attraction homes are astatine the precise apical of the database erstwhile it comes to questionable recruitment practices and exploitation of workers.

Some person been out-and-out fraudulent successful their attack erstwhile it comes to hiring overseas staff.

The Home Office's autarkic Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), which helps usher policy, raised concerns astatine the extremity of 2023 aft it uncovered 'extremely concerning' grounds of maltreatment of the attraction idiosyncratic visa system.

A institution which supposedly ran attraction homes sponsored 498 visas adjacent though it had not provided immoderate services for months, the committee said successful a report, portion 39 carers were listed arsenic residing successful a five-bedroom property.

Some applicants paid thousands of pounds for forged documents, and 1 was charged £21,000 by their sponsoring institution for a visa, the MAC continued earlier adding, disturbingly, that 'some of these migrants were past fixed children to postulation into the UK'.

The occupation has not gone away. In its latest yearly study published past period the Gangmasters & Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA), which is liable for investigating allegations of amerciable activities, described the attraction assemblage arsenic an 'emerging threat' wherever determination has been 'a notable summation successful idiosyncratic exploitation'.

In the 12 months to the extremity of March 2024 the GLAA launched a full of 133 investigations and, incredibly, 46 of those – conscionable implicit a 3rd – were 'care-related'.

The surge is astir apt a by-product of the immense numbers of overseas workers who person already been brought successful to prop up the attraction sector.

Home Office data shows that 158,000 radical were handed a 'health and societal attraction visa' – a subset of the skilled idiosyncratic visa way – successful 2023, and a further 205,000 visas were fixed to members of their families truthful they could besides travel to the UK.

That yearly full – a staggering 363,000 – fell past twelvemonth to 123,000, chiefly acknowledgment to restrictions belatedly brought successful by the erstwhile government.

However, numbers successful the remainder of the skilled idiosyncratic way really went up by astir 8,000 past twelvemonth compared with 2023, hitting 132,700 including dependants. This was contempt the Conservatives' instauration of a higher wage threshold.

In immoderate cases, astatine least, the Home Office takes enactment against transgressors. One salient illustration acrophobic a institution that operated 15 attraction homes crossed the North East – and led to ineligible action, which was finalised successful the Court of Appeal past period and the Home Office's revocation upheld.

Prestwick Care had held a sponsorship licence since 2008 but aft a compliance sojourn from the Home Office successful 2022 that licence was withdrawn. At the time, Prestwick employed 857 staff, of whom 219 were overseas nationals, which the institution had sponsored.

The Home Office recovered grounds that 7 workers were undertaking roles that did not lucifer the occupation statement oregon wage levels disclosed to the Home Office.

Prestwick's published accounts boast that it won a '20-bed two-year NHS contract' for 1 of its homes which ended successful July 2023.

So, successful the topsy-turvy satellite of authoritative contracts, a institution that had been penalised by 1 limb of the Government for recruiting discrepancies continued to payment from a woody with different portion of the nationalist sector.

What tin beryllium done astir this changeless reliance connected overseas labour that is truthful unfastened to maltreatment and is driving levels of monolithic nett migration? MAC president Professor Brian Bell believes that lone 'substantial argumentation changes' volition pb to a important fall.

Care-worker wage should summation by £1 an hr to promote much UK-based applicants, helium has said, due to the fact that unless the occupation is made much attractive, 'I person nary thought wherever the workers to capable the vacancies are going to travel from, if not from abroad'.

Additionally, MAC suggested successful October 2023 that the database of jobs wherever determination are shortages – known arsenic the 'immigration wage list', which opens them up to cut-price migrants – should beryllium chopped from 60 roles to conscionable eight. Today, it inactive lists 23. Professor Bell suggested that, alternatively of looking overseas for workers, businesses could bash much to enlistee people, including hiring overseas workers already here.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp points retired that the Opposition has made a fig of proposals to yet get a grip connected the occupation – including a definite headdress connected the fig of migrants allowed into Britain each year.

But Conservative amendments to the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, presently earlier Parliament, were rejected by Labour successful March.

'The numbers entering the state person been acold excessively high,' says Mr Philp. 'That was wherefore we tabled amendments to the borders Bill requiring a broad £38,000 wage threshold and introducing a binding yearly headdress connected migrants astatine a level to beryllium voted upon by Parliament. It is shocking that Labour voted against these applicable solutions. The epoch of wide migration has to travel to an end.'

Labour's answers look much nebulous. Rather than limiting numbers who tin travel here, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has announced measures to promote employers to prosecute from the excavation of employees already here. Quangos volition enactment unneurotic to boost grooming levels and guarantee the jobless successful Britain person skills required by employers, she suggests. It is simply a agelong shot, to accidental the least, and relies connected the occupation marketplace responding positively.

When companies person speedy and casual ways to prosecute unit from overseas – including immoderate astatine bargain rates – what is the inducement to bash things the hard way?

Migration curate Seema Malhotra says the Government has 'acted swiftly' to prohibition employers who maltreatment the strategy from bringing successful overseas workers.

'In conscionable implicit 9 months we person driven guardant a renewed crackdown, seeing implicit 600 amerciable moving arrests successful January alone, and implicit 1,000 civilian punishment notices served to businesses.

'We've besides surpassed our pledge to present the highest complaint of removals since 2018.

'We are nether nary illusions astir the standard of the situation we face, but this Government is restoring bid to the migration system.'

But without pugnacious measures that really bounds numbers and decently skewer the contented – overmuch similar a kebab – the overseas workers volition proceed to arrive.