38,000 Zimbabweans, up 500%, move to the UK using the CoS route – new data shows

By Staff Reporter

MORE than 38,000 Zimbabweans relocated to the United Kingdom (UK) over in the past year using the Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS) visa route, latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has revealed.

The figure, which includes health and care workers together with their partners and children, represents a 500 percent increase on the 7,721 recorded over the one-year period to June 2022.

The UK government has increased overseas recruitment for amid serious staff shortages in its health and care sector with Zimbabweans among the top three nationalities taking advantage the CoS visa route to take up support and care jobs in Britain.

A CoS is an immigration document that allows employers to hire skilled workers from outside the UK on a temporary basis. Under the scheme, the workers can also bring in dependent partners and children.

According to the ONS, some 20,152 health and care worker visas had been issued to Zimbabweans as of June 2023, up 372 percent on the 4,270 issued by June 2022.

Zimbabwe was third behind India and Nigeria in terms of the number of CoS visas granted.

“Indian nationals were the top nationality for visas in the ‘Worker’ category, representing almost one-third (31%) of grants, and were by far the top nationality for both the ‘Skilled Worker’ and ‘Skilled Worker – Health and Care’ visas,” reads the ONS report.

In terms of dependents, 17,870 visas had been issued by June 2023, up 418 percent compared to June 2022.

“The proportion of all work-related visas granted to dependants was 40%, compared to 33% in the preceding year. On average, there were 0.7 dependants granted per main applicant on a ‘Skilled Worker’ visa, whilst there were 1.1 dependants granted per main applicant on a ‘Skilled Worker – Health and Care’ visa,” the report added.

The ONS released its net migration data on Thursday showing that the difference between those leaving and those moving to the UK hit a record 745,000 by December 2022.

The figure for the year to June 2023 is estimated to be lower, at 672,000.

Even so, the data drew, deep concern from Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s own governing Conservative party with senior Tories such as former minister Simon Clarke saying it was “unsustainable both economically and socially” to have legal migration so high.

Another Conservative MP, Jonathan Gullis, called the figures “completely unacceptable to the majority of the British people”, and called for “drastic action”.

For the opposition Labour party, shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said the new data statistics “the scale of utter Tory failure on immigration, asylum, and the economy”.

Prime Minister Sunak is under increasing pressure from the right of his party to reduce net migration in light of the 2019 Tory manifesto, which promised to bring the “overall number down”.

Home Secretary James Cleverly insisted the government remained “completely committed to reducing levels of legal migration, while also “focusing relentlessly” on tackling illegal migration.

He said ministers were “working across government on further measures to prevent exploitation and manipulation of our visa system, including clamping down on those that take advantage of the flexibility of the immigration system”.