Nikhil Inamdar and Jalulton Avishnu Vardhan
Arun George, one of the victims, says that the event made him go back at least a financially
It took Arun George a professional half-life to bring together £ 15,000 ($ 19,460) in savings, which he had used to get a job for care for his wife in the United Kingdom.
But barely a few months, he lost everything.
Mr. George – This is not his real name because his wife does not want to be identified in their small community for shame associated with his return unemployed – paid the money at the end of 2023 to the managers of Alchita Care.
The BBC has seen evidence of payment in Alchita Care, the private home for domiciliary care in Bradford which sponsored the visa of its family. He did it at the request of a local agent in his city in the state of southern India in Kerala.
It was the promise of a better life for their child who has special needs that prompted the couple to dive into their savings and take such a risk. But when they arrived in the United Kingdom, there was no work.
“We continued to continue the House of Care, but they invented excuses. After pleading them, they forced us to undergo unpaid training and gave my wife only three days of work,” said George. “We could not continue and returned to India a few months later.”
Mr. George thinks he was scammed by the company and says that the event has made him go financially for a decade. His family is only one of the hundreds of people in Kerala looking for work in the United Kingdom who were operated by recruiters, care and intermediaries.
Most have now abandoned the hope of obtaining justice or their money.
Alchita Care in Bradford did not answer questions from the BBC. Their sponsorship license – which allows care houses to issue sponsorship certificates to foreign care workers who apply for visas – was deleted by the home office last year.
But at least three other healthcare workers who sent thousands of books to Alchita Care and uprooted their Kerala life told us that the jobs that had been promised to them did not materialize.
Vishnu Vardhan
For many Indians, the care agent’s visa was a golden ticket for a better life because they could take the family
One of them, still in the United Kingdom, said that his condition was so precarious that it has survived “bread and milk” for charity stores for a few months.
Like Mr. George, Sridevi (not his real name) says that she was billed £ 15,000 for visa sponsorship by Alchita Care. It spent an additional £ 3,000 to go to the United Kingdom in 2023.
She is unable to return to India, frightened to face family members and friends of whom she took a loan to make the trip.
“I find it hard to pay my rent and my meals,” she said. Her work is far from the stable work of eight hours that has been promised to him, she said. It is sometimes on call from 4 a.m. to 9 p.m., leading from one patient’s home to another, but is only paid for the few hours that she really is with the patient, and not the complete change.
It is estimated that thousands of Kerala nurses, desperate to migrate to the United Kingdom, were exploited after the government has added care workers to the UK’s occupations during COVID. This allowed people to be recruited abroad as long as they were sponsored.
For many, the care worker’s visa was a golden ticket for a better life because they could take the family.
Baiju Thittala, member of the Labor Party and Mayor of Cambridge, told the BBC that he had represented at least 10 of these victims in the past three years.
But the cross-border nature of these operating regimes means that it was incredibly difficult to continue justice, he said. Very often, the victims have made payments to the care homes or the intermediaries domiciled outside India, which leads to “jurisdiction problems”, he added.
Second, lawyers are expensive and most care workers, already in debt, can hardly afford to fight in court.
Thittala estimates that at least 1,000 to 2,000 people from Kerala, directly or indirectly victims of these programs, are still in the United Kingdom.
Vishnu Vardhan
In the city of Kothamangalam, around thirty people declared that they had collectively lost millions of dollars while trying to obtain a care visa
There are also hundreds of people dispersed in the cities of Kerala who have lost money before even leaving the house.
In the city of Kothamangalam, the BBC spoke to around thirty people who had collectively lost millions of dollars while trying to obtain a care visa that allows professionals to come – or to stay – in the United Kingdom to work in the social care sector.
All accused an agent – Henry Poulos and his Grace International agency in the United Kingdom and India – to deprive them of their savings through false job offers and letters of sponsorship.
Mr. Poulos even made some of them made a 2,500 km trip to Delhi for nonexistent visa meetings, they said.
Shilpa, who lives in the city of Alleppey, told the BBC that she had contracted a bank loan at an interest rate of 13% to pay Mr. Poulos, who gave him a false sponsorship certificate.
“I thought the United Kingdom would offer a good future for my three daughters, but now I find it hard to pay their tuition fees,” she told the BBC.
“I lost everything. My wife had left her job in Israel so that we could move to the United Kingdom,” said another victim, Binu, broken down. He made £ 1,500 comfortable with his wife in Israel, but was now forced to get his children out of private school in Kerala because there is no more money.
Neither Mr. Poulos nor Grace International responded to the BBC, despite repeated attempts to contact them. Kothamangalam police said Mr. Poulos was on the run in the United Kingdom and that they had sealed his local offices after receiving complaints from six people.
Vishnu Vardhan
Shilpa told the BBC that it had contracted a bank loan at an interest rate of 13% to pay the agent for his visa
The previous conservative government in the United Kingdom admitted last year that there was “clear evidence” that care agents were offered visas under false pretexts and paid well below the minimum wage required for their work.
The rules to reduce its abusive use were tightened in 2024, including the increase in minimum wages. Care workers are also now limited to taking career people, making it a less attractive proposal for families.
Since July 2022, around 450 licenses allowing employers to recruit foreign workers have been revoked in the care sector.
Since the beginning of this year, sponsors have now been explicitly prohibited by the Ministry of the Interior to transmit the cost of sponsor license fees or administrative costs associated with potential employees.
The senior Kerala police officials, on the other hand, told the BBC that they still investigated these cases in India and would work with Interpol agencies to suppress the agents, if necessary.
But for the hundreds who have already been exploited, justice remains elusive and always a distant dream.
