Migrant workers are more vulnerable than locals to work­place exploitation and abuses for multiple reasons, includ­ing risk factors that are hard to mitigate such as the types of work that migrants are more likely to do in higher-risk sectors, or the lack of familiarity with labour standards reg­ulations and pathways to redress in the host country con­text. However, the current UK work immigration system in­creases this vulnerability significantly because it is struc­tured in such a way as to create a systemic risk of exploitation, running the spectrum from harassment to modern slavery. 40 The key factors driving this systemic risk are, employer-sponsorship of visas; short-term, inflexible vi­sas; and the poor structures for labour inspection, including most worryingly the combination of immigration enforce­ment and inspection raids or shared data. Reform labour inspections and protections from workplace exploitation The UK’s labour inspection structures are insufficient in general, falling well below the ILO recommended bench­mark of one inspector per 10,000 workers. 41 The effective­ness of labour inspections is also severely undermined, however, by the sharing of data and in some cases opera­tion of joint raids between the Home Office and labour in­spection. This means that a migrant worker has reason to fear reporting unsafe or exploitative working conditions as they may be targeted by immigration enforcement if they come to the attention of the authorities. This forces mi­grant workers across a vast range of informal areas of work in particular to endure poor conditions and sometimes se­vere abuses without the prospect of help. Protections for migrant workers, such as secure reporting procedures in­cluding a firewall between labour inspections and immigra­tion enforcement are largely absent from the Labour gov­ernment’s flagship Employment Rights Bill. 42 Under the recently-closed Social Care Workers’ Visa, for ex­ample, migrant workers who depended on their placement with a care home for their right to continue to live in the UK felt unable to complain about extremely poor condi­tions, for fear that they would be the ones to lose their only livelihood and potentially be forced to leave if they did speak up. 43 This fear was not unfounded, as where inspections were carried out and uncovered abuses, the care home’s licence to sponsor visas was revoked, leaving the migrant workers to scramble to try to find an alternative sponsor within the tight deadline, or face losing their right to stay in the UK. This restrictive visa is a perfect case study of how it is stringent visa conditions that disempower migrant workers, leading to a reduction in accountability for employers and so drive down standards in key industries. By protecting the rights of those workers to submit com­plaints and have minimum employment standards adhered to without it impacting their immigration status, we could have seen migrant and local workers stand together to achieve better pay and conditions for all instead. Scrap restrictive employer-sponsored visas The Care Worker Visa has now been scrapped, but the same logic and conditions that created a systemic risk of abuse on that pathway exists still throughout the work­based immigration system. There needs to be an overhaul of the entire system based around clear principles to pro­mote equal, safe, and dignified working conditions for all, especially in areas of lower paid work, where exploitation risks are higher. 44 The government must abandon the current model of short­term employer sponsorship for working visas. These visas tie migrant workers to a single employer, putting them in a much greater power imbalance with their employer than usual. On top of the issues outlined above with limiting mi­grants’ access to redress from exploitative working condi­tions, they limit the flexibility of workers to move freely through the labour market, seeking better pay, conditions, and developing their potential. The employer sponsorship model suffers from its own ri­gidity, with minimum salary thresholds meaningless as they require a list of“shortage occupations” where salaries are lower, but demand for skills so intense, that loopholes and bespoke schemes for each area of employment are used to fill the gaps. These bespoke schemes have prolifer­ated since Brexit, with the resulting increase in exploitation documented among migrant care workers, 45 domestic workers, 46 and farm workers. 47 But the risk of exploitation pervades the entire work-sponsorship system as the same restrictions are baked in throughout. 40  https://www.workrightscentre.org/media/1gxlxig2/final-systemic-drivers-of-migrant-worker-exploitation.pdf 41  https://www.tuc.org.uk/sites/default/files/2021-05/Enforce%20report%20draft%20Final%20Version%202020%20110521.pdf 42  https://labourexploitation.org/publications/employment-rights-bill-tackle-restrictive-visas-or-increase-inequality/ 43  https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/policy/publications/spotlight-report-no-1-how-work-visa-design-is-driving-exploitation/ 44  https://labourexploitation.org/publications/blueprint-for-safer-and-fairer-migration/ 45  Unison(2024)‘Expendable labour: The exploitation of migrant care workers’, website last accessed: 8 August 2024. https://www.unison.org.uk/content/uploads/2023/11/ Expendable-labour-report.pdf 46  Kalayaan(2024)’12 Years of Modern Slavery: The smokescreen used to deflect state accountability for migrant domestic workers’, website last accessed: 8 August 2024. http://www.kalayaan.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Kalayaan_Report_2024_.pdf 47  Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre(2024)‘UK agriculture and care visas: worker exploitation and obstacles to redress’, website last accessed: 8 August 2024. https://labourexploitation.org/app/uploads/2024/03/Visas-full-report.pdf Time for change 11