As part of a regulation change aimed at reducing net migration, Yvette Cooper has said that care facilities would not be allowed to hire foreign workers.
The home secretary stated that providers should instead look to hire foreign workers who have already arrived in the UK or extend current visas, a development that may worry firms in the industry.
It is a sneak peek at broader proposals Cooper will unveil on Monday to lower net migration to the UK.
Additionally, it has come to light that the government intends to evaluate and deport any foreign offenders who commit crimes in the United Kingdom.
Cooper said in a series of interviews on Sunday that the government will focus on hiring in lower-skilled industries rather than establishing a net migration number.
Cooper stated: "We're going to introduce new restrictions on lower-skilled workers, so new visa controls, because we think actually what we should be doing is concentrating on the higher-skilled migration and we should be concentrating on training in the UK," Cooper said in an interview with Trevor Phillips on Sky News' Sunday Morning.
"We will be closing the care worker visa for overseas recruitment, and we will be implementing new requirements to train here in the UK to ensure that the UK workforce benefits."
Cooper said that enterprises should hire from a pool of individuals who arrived as care workers in good faith but had been "exploited" by dishonest employers when asked where care homes would hire personnel by Laura Kuenssberg of the BBC.
"Care firms need to hire such employees. Additionally, they are able to extend current visas. They could also hire from among those already in the country on other visas. However, we do believe it's time to stop hiring care workers from overseas," she said.
Cooper said ministers thought modifications to certain visas may lead to "up to 50,000 fewer lower-skilled visas" over the next year, but she refused to provide a particular goal for net migration.
Currently, only foreign offenders who are sentenced to imprisonment are reported to the Home Office, and only those who are imprisoned for a year are typically given consideration for deportation.
The new arrangements will allow the Home Office to use its broader removal powers for other crimes, such as taking quicker action to remove individuals who have just arrived in the country but have already committed crimes, and will notify it of all foreign nationals convicted of crimes, not just those who are sentenced to prison.
The change will make it simpler to apprehend offenders of crimes like as street crime, knife crime, and assault against women and girls before their danger becomes more serious.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said that he would back Labour's proposal to eliminate care worker visas. He said, "Yes, I would," when asked whether he would support the initiative on the BBC's Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg show.
Cooper will deliver a government white paper on Monday, which outlines proposals for future legislation aimed at significantly reducing net migration. This comes as officials attempt to address Reform UK's victory in the local election.
A significant portion of Nigel Farage's party's campaign emphasis has been on the rise in net migration and the inaction of previous administrations in preventing unauthorised asylum-seeker crossings of the Channel.
Additionally, the Home Office will implement regulations that would classify any foreign citizen listed on the sex offender registry as having committed a "serious crime" and deny them any claim to asylum protections in the UK, regardless of the length of their sentence.
The government will amend immigration laws and rejection policies to reflect these developments as part of the white paper. This implies that a person's application will be denied if they commit a crime while on a temporary visa.
Other plans are anticipated to include new regulations that will deprive businesses of the ability to sponsor foreign employees if they consistently fail to make an attempt to hire employees in the UK rather than overseas. The government targets the IT and engineering sectors.
For the majority of professions that do not need graduate-level abilities, work visas are anticipated to be strictly time-limited.
Tighter regulations will apply to international students who have earned degrees in the UK on their eligibility to stay after graduation. Although it is assumed that foreign workers would grasp English better, ideas of an A-level equivalent have reportedly been rejected.
Cooper is under a lot of pressure to lower net migration even further. Reform, which promises to effectively stop most migration, is leading in national voter choice surveys and won control of ten municipalities on May 1.
Even while the quantity of skilled visas has already drastically decreased in recent years, further barriers to hiring abroad might pose issues for sectors like healthcare and hospitality.
Additionally, ministers want to establish a Labour Market Evidence Group composed of representatives from the government, the Migration Advisory Council (MAC), business, and skills organisations. It will "inform understanding of where sectors are overly reliant on overseas labour and reverse underinvestment in domestic skills," according to the Home Office.
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