The UK government recently announced a strategy to cut migration levels in response to increasing demands for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to address net migration figures. The Monday plan includes raising the minimum salary needed for skilled overseas workers and prohibiting care workers from bringing dependents to the UK, with the ultimate goal of reducing legal migration by 300,000 people.

The new strategy is a five-point plan which includes increasing the minimum salary needed for skilled overseas workers from £26,200 to £38,700 and stopping care workers from bringing dependents to the UK. The plan also proposes ending companies using the 20 percent salary discount for shortage occupations, increasing the charge for foreign workers to use the NHS and asking the Migration Advisory Committee to review the graduate visa route.

Sunak has been facing escalating demands to cut migration numbers, following a record figure of 745,000 in 2022, as well as defeats for his government’s Rwanda deportation policy. Since the Conservative’s election in 2010, the party has consistently promised to lower net migration figures, and the driving force behind the Brexit “leave” campaign was the concept of “taking back control” of the UK’s borders. Sunak stated that immigration was too high and that he was “taking radical action to bring it down.”

The changes have sparked outrage among unions, migrants rights charities and opposition politicians. Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper characterized the plan as an “admission of years of Tory failure on economy and immigration.” Meanwhile, one of the UK’s largest trade unions, Unison, stated that the “Home Secretary’s announcement of new immigration plans will sacrifice migrant care workers and risk a total collapse of the UK’s care system, just to appease Tory backbenchers.”