“I should be in a position of helping, not receiving aid,” says one Nigerian lady.

Fraught with emotion and chatting with us anonymously within the slim hall of a meals financial institution, she is now destitute regardless of being promised a job in Britain.

Blessing, not her actual identify, advised us she arrived within the UK three months in the past. She says she paid somebody she calls an “agent” in Nigeria £10,000 to rearrange a job as a carer within the UK.

But when she acquired right here she discovered there was no work for her.

Her story is a part of a wider drawback, revealed in a Sky News investigation this yr displaying how the expert employee visa system is being abused with middlemen allegedly being paid enormous sums of cash to rearrange jobs within the UK as carers that don’t exist.

Many of those that cannot get work are struggling to outlive, turning to meals banks and even sleeping tough.

Blessing is now reliant on handouts.

At a meals financial institution in a Nigerian Community Centre in Greater Manchester she is given a procuring bag of primary provides – the cabinets and crates are full of donations of bread, cereal, tinned tomatoes and acquainted African objects like palm oil and beans.

Blessing says: “I’ve at all times offered for myself. I’m a really hard-working, diligent particular person. So for me to be right here relying on folks to eat coming to the meals financial institution to get meals is not pleased with me.

“I don’t feel happy about it.

“It makes me really feel I’m much less of an individual. I must be ready of serving to not receiving assist as a result of this isn’t who I used to be again in my nation.”

‘It makes me feel as though I’m a fool’

Blessing asked us not to contact the British company which sponsored her for fear of repercussions – but showed us her passport and other documents supporting her account of what happened.

I ask her why she didn’t make the application herself. With some irony, she says: “I might have completed it myself however there are such a lot of frauds on the web [in Nigeria] you do not know what’s actual.

“It makes me feel as though I’m a fool,” she says.

Blessing says she is aware of others who’ve expert employee visas solely to get right here and discover there is no work ready for them.

She sighs: “There are so many. Dozens. I met a lot here and so many are still coming after I’ve come. There’s a big scam going on.”

‘Shameful’ problem

Mary Adekugbe, the founding father of the Nigerian Community Centre in Rochdale, says these on expert employee visas now needing assist is an enormous problem that’s growing her workload – one thing she describes as “shameful”.

About 15 of the 35-40 individuals who usually come to the weekly meals financial institution have expert employee visas, she says.

“We are overwhelmed,” she says. “People are desperate. It’s so worrying.”

She paints us an image of these she has seen: “A grown-up man crying like a baby. Children crying without food because their parents can’t work to support them. No houses. No job. This is alarming.”

‘She offered every part she had’

As we end chatting by the entrance door two girls scurry previous with their luggage of meals. It’s solely afterwards we’re advised their story – that they have been too ashamed to talk to us: one of many girls has hit all-time low and, with nowhere else to go, lives on the bus.

Community volunteer Jones Adekube says: “Last week we gave her bread and tuna because that’s what she can eat easily without cooking or warming.”

Now homeless, the woman on the bus is one more one that paid an agent in Nigeria to rearrange care work within the UK, we’re advised.

Mr Adekube says: “She did some work when she came in. Initially they gave her one shift a week which is 12 hours a week. As time went on there were no shifts.

“According to what she confirmed us she was supplied a full-time job as a carer. And now she’s sleeping on the bus.”

He adds: “She’s in a nasty manner. She cannot return dwelling. She has nothing at dwelling. She offered every part she had.”

‘It’s not been easy’

Another couple – we’re calling them Allen and Joyce – have come to the UK with their young son.

We’ve changed their names but they showed us documents which prove they’re in the UK on skilled worker visas.

Joyce says she was additionally promised work as a carer and Allen was in a position to accompany her as a result of he’s classed as her dependent.

Allen says: “It’s not been easy. I had to sell my car; sell my property, get a loan and took a lot of risk to raise the money.”

Under the phrases of the expert employee visa they can not work in some other job class and are restricted to twenty hours per week underneath one other employer within the care sector.

Often, dwelling care suppliers require entry to a automobile, and completely switching sponsors is sort of unimaginable.

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Joyce says: “It’s very difficult because most jobs you want to get – they will first of all tell you that you’ve got a sponsor from somewhere else. So maybe you should go back to that place to get your job. That’s what they always say.”

“We are begging the [UK] government if they can look into it, even if it is not skilled work, if they can give us another sponsorship or any other work, we are ready to do. For our survival.”

Over 170,000 expert employee visas issued in a yr

In the 12 months to March 2023, 170,993 expert employee visas have been awarded. In the well being and care sector alone, grants have elevated over two and a half instances and signify over half of all work visas issued in the identical interval.

On the job with the bottom entry requirement – care employees and residential carers – 40,416 folks have been awarded visas within the yr to March 2023.

In completely different elements of the nation and throughout completely different communities we’re listening to the identical factor.

In Bradford in West Yorkshire, folks within the city’s established Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities converse of their considerations about folks struggling to eat and put a roof over their heads having come to the UK to work.

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‘They are determined’

Moin Uddin Khan, who owns the big Al-Falah Supermarket in Bradford, says persons are at all times coming in asking for work – predominantly individuals who have come on expert employee visas.

Mr Khan says: “They are very desperate. Some people they come begging me because I don’t have any food to eat – and you get this every day.”

The store supervisor, Anhar Ali, says some candidates by no means had any intention of working as carers within the first place – the job they have been sponsored for as a situation of coming into the nation.

He says: “Some of them are told before they arrive, ‘you won’t have a job, you’re only arriving here’. And they do pay a lot of money. It’s just a way to get to the UK.”

Some of the people who find themselves abusing the route to achieve Britain, Mr Ali says, come into the store with out even having the ability to converse English – a primary requirement to acquire a talented employee visa.

In the again workplace, he exhibits us the most recent pile of CVs from folks attempting to get a job. He has to examine each with the Home Office’s on-line immigration standing instrument – in any other case the shop may very well be fined hundreds of kilos.

Nearly half the rejected CVs, Mr Ali claims, come from folks not too long ago arriving on expert employee visas as carers however who can not legally do store work.

Unrealistic view of life in Britain

And there’s a pressure, Mr Ali admits, on the group over these prepared to do something for even under minimal wage.

“If they’re going to businesses and offering themselves for less money some businesses may want to go down that route and employ them and sack the local employees,” he says.

Mobeen Hussain, who based a group hub and cafe in Queensbury, on the outskirts of Bradford, says some folks have an unrealistic view of how straightforward will probably be to construct a brand new life in Britain.

He says: “I think a lot of people feel that they’re going to come over here, they’re going to start a new life, it’s going to be a life where they’re going to make lots of money, they’re going to be living a lavish lifestyle. But it’s nothing like that.”

Mr Hussain stated the federal government checks are weak and must be tightened.

A Home Office spokesperson stated: “Abuse of our immigration system will not be tolerated and we have robust measures in place to ensure compliance.

“We will at all times take decisive motion if employers break the foundations, together with by revoking sponsor licences when needed.”

Reporting by Lisa Holland and Nick Stylianou
Production by Samuel Osborne