The Labour government’s upcoming immigration White Paper has been trailed as a tough, technocratic attempt to “fix” a “broken” migration system.

But peel away the headlines, and this is not a rational plan for reform but a calculated assault on the UK’s most vulnerable people — the sick, the elderly, the disabled — wrapped in the populist rhetoric of border control.

From longer settlement routes to tougher English language tests, from visa restrictions targeting specific nationalities to new curbs on family rights under the European Convention on Human Rights, Labour’s proposals are not just draconian — they are deeply regressive, echoing the very far-right ideologies the party claims to oppose.

But nowhere is the cruelty and incoherence more blatant than in the plans to restrict care worker migration.

Here, the government isn’t simply failing to support a collapsing care system — it is actively helping to dismantle it.

The care sector: starved, not flooded

The UK’s social care sector is not overwhelmed by migrants.

It is overwhelmed by decades of political neglect, privatisation, and underfunding.

Staff shortages have reached catastrophic levels, with an estimated 150,000 vacancies across England alone.

Most care providers now say they simply cannot operate without migrant labour.

And yet Labour’s new policy will ban the recruitment of care workers from overseas, requiring care homes to “prioritise” British workers — despite offering no wage increases, no improved working conditions, and no national recruitment strategy.

Let’s be clear: this is not a practical plan.

This is sabotage.

A token workforce to disguise a systemic crisis

Labour officials have pointed to a pool of 10,000 migrant care workers currently in the UK but unable to work — stranded due to employer failures, visa issues, or lost sponsorship.

The new plan reportedly aims to redeploy them to fill the gaps left by the recruitment ban.

But this is a fig leaf.

The care sector needs 150,000 workers, not 10,000.

That shortfall will not be filled by domestic labour unless conditions change dramatically — and Labour has no intention of raising pay to match the skills and sacrifices the job demands.

Care work is skilled work.

It demands compassion, training, resilience, and stamina.

But it has been degraded for decades — reduced to a low-wage, low-status sector whose workforce is expected to survive on moral purpose alone.

Labour’s plan won’t reverse this degradation. It weaponises it — by asking the public to blame migrants when the system breaks, rather than those in power who engineered its collapse.

Migrants as scapegoats, the public as patsies

The government’s rhetoric is clear: it blames high migration for systemic failures in housing, the NHS, and public services — while cutting off the very workforce that keeps these services afloat.

This isn’t a contradiction. It’s the plan.

By ending overseas care recruitment while knowing that collapse is imminent, Labour can later say: “This is what the public wanted.”

When people see their relatives left without care, the government won’t admit failure — it will blame foreigners, again.

In doing so, Labour is hoping to outflank Reform UK and the far right by mimicking their policies, their language, even their tone.

But this tactic is not only morally bankrupt — it’s strategically naive.

People who want far-right policies will vote for the far right.

They prefer the original to the copy.

This isn’t pragmatism — it’s persecution

This is not the first betrayal by Labour. In recent months, the party has turned its fire on:

• Parents with more than two children, by upholding the two-child benefit cap;

• Pensioners, by ending universal Winter Fuel Payments;

• Disabled people, by proposing sweeping changes to Personal Independence Payment that will lead to mass disqualification and destitution.

Now, by breaking the care sector in the name of migration control, Labour is targeting more of the most defenceless people in the country: the elderly, the sick, the disabled — those whose very survival depends on a functioning care system.

This is not centrism.

This is not “sensible reform.”

This is a co-ordinated ideological betrayal of the Labour Party’s foundational principles of solidarity, compassion, and public provision.

Labour must be held to account

Labour once stood for the defence of working people, the vulnerable, and the welfare state.

It now uses immigration policy as a weapon to punish the very people it once pledged to protect.

The public must not be fooled.

These policies are not inevitable.

They are choices—and they are cruel.

No one voted for this kind of country. And no one should accept it in silence.

What you can do: resist, refuse, organise

This isn’t just about immigration. It’s about what kind of country we want to live in — and whether we’re willing to let our leaders dismantle compassion, sabotage care, and scapegoat the powerless in our name.

Labour’s assault on care and migration must not go unchallenged.

Here’s how you can take action:

• Write to your MP — whether Labour, Tory, Lib Dem or Independent — and demand they oppose any immigration plans that undermine social care or scapegoat migrant workers. Ask them how they plan to support a care system now being set up to fail.

• Join or organise local protests — speak to trade unions, care campaigners, migrant rights groups, and disability organisations. If you’re not sure where to start, groups like Migrants Organise, DPAC (Disabled People Against Cuts), and Care and Support Workers Organise are already fighting this battle.

• Use your platform — share this article. Talk to your friends, family, neighbours. Challenge the narrative that pits British people against migrant workers — and remind people who the real culprits are.

• Support the workers and users of care — amplify their voices. If you or someone you know is directly affected, speak out. Your lived experience is the truth this government hopes to silence.

• Push for alternative policies — demand a care system funded properly, staffed fairly, and respected as a cornerstone of any decent society. Demand that workers — of all nationalities — be paid what they deserve.

This is not just a policy dispute. It’s a moral crisis. And the only thing that will stop it is collective resistance.

We owe it to the carers.

We owe it to the people they support.

And we owe it to the country we want to become.