I risked my life for the NHS. Now I face five years in migration limbo

When diagnostic radiographer Paul Awak, 39, came to the UK in 2021, he didn’t know whether he and his wife would survive working in the NHS during at the height of the Covid pandemic. “At the time we came in, we never knew if there was going to be any cure or vaccine that could stop the pandemic from progressing,” Awak said. “We came in knowing that we either solve the problem, or we die solving the problem.” Five years later, he and his wife, a mental health support worker, should be eligible for permanent settlement in the UK. But if the Labour Party’s proposed changes to immigration rules come into force this autumn, they will have to wait another five years before they can apply for indefinite leave to remain (ILR). Shorts Awak said: “We were at risk of dying, and not knowing what will happen to our kids…Now [the Government] is trying to shift the goal posts in the middle of the match. It’s really, really unfair.” Several health and social care organisations have condemned the proposed changes to ILR requirements, warning that making the country less attractive to migrants will cause the NHS to miss waiting list targets. ‘We came here to save lives’ Awak, now living in Bedfordshire, had a career in healthcare in Nigeria but decided to bring his family to the UK on the skilled worker visa route when he “saw the number of deaths from Covid”. “We came here to help the system and to save lives,” he said. “There was lots of applause [during the pandemic] that we put our lives on the line to save the population of UK citizens.” Now, he feels that migrant health care workers have a become a “soft target” for a Government under pressure to bring down net migration figures, which he feels is “ungrateful” and “unfair” after what they contributed. “We are not fleecing the economy, we are making vital contributions,” he said. “I paid over £17,000 in taxes last year, and that doesn’t include what my wife paid….to be labelled as if you were a parasite is very uncalled for.” ‘I’ll leave if the rules are changed’ Ene (who did not wish to give his real name), 40, a care worker living in Surrey, told The i Paper he has already received job offers in Canada and Australia and plans to take them up if the Government’s plans to extend the wait for ILR come into force. “The Government is telling us now that the rules that are applicable are not the rules from when you were entering,” he said. “It means in another 15 years, the Government might reinvent another rule and tell you, ‘oh, you need to spend 10 more years’.” Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood introduced the controversial plans to tighten migration rules (Photo: Leon Neal/Getty) Under the proposed changes, called “earned settlement”, care workers could face a wait of up to 15 years for ILR because their work is considered medium-skilled, where radiographers are classed as higher skilled. Ene and his wife, also a care worker, have been saving up to apply for ILR since they arrived in 2022, as it will cost close to £15,000 for the application including their two children. “Each time my eight-year-old asks me if it means we have to leave the country, I tell her ‘No, no, no,'” he said. “[But] she sees the worries, she sees the anxiety.” ‘The NHS will collapse’ Dean Rogers, from the Society of Radiographers, said his organisation “emphatically rejects the Government’s earned settlement proposals”. He said at a recent event in Parliament organised by the Work Rights Centre, a charity which supports migrant workers: “Government has a choice. Meet your arbitrary immigration targets or fail to meet waiting list reduction targets or cancer targets. You can’t do both.” Internationally trained professionals now make up almost a third of the UK’s diagnostic radiographers, but registrations have fallen since May 2026, according to the society. Rogers attributes this directly to the Government’s “hostile environment policy”. Mahmood’s reforms are designed to address concerns that hundreds of thousands of immigrants could soon be given the right to stay in the UK permanently and access benefits as migrant numbers went up from 2021 and peaked at 944,000 in the year ending March 2023. The number of migrants entering the country has since been falling to record lows due to various visa restrictions imposed by the Conservatives and Labour in recent years. Michaela Chen from the Work Rights Centre said: “We urge this Government to abandon these harmful proposals, and honour its promises to people who have already sacrificed so much to work in the UK.” “Without the contributions of expatriates, whom you call migrant workers, the NHS will collapse,” Awak agreed. “You don’t know what you have until you’ve lost it.” The Home Secretary is expected to announce a final decision on whether her changes will apply to an estimated 1.6 million immigrants who are set to qualify for ILR between 2026 and 2030 later this year. A Home Office spokesperson said it will “set out its response” to a consultation on the changes “in due course”.