Why should our social care system become reliant on migrant workers? - Yorkshire Post Letters

From: John Riseley, Harrogate.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for a Green, Andy Brown (Yorkshire Post, August 10) suggests that the answer to our shortage of care workers is yet more immigration.

In care work, a substantially higher proportion of staff are immigrants than in most other sectors. Wouldn’t it be healthier for migrants to be spread more evenly across the economy? If there is some legitimate reason for them to be concentrated in care services, why do we let so many come to work in nail bars?

Immigration to this country is not the only way of bringing together British invalids and foreign carers. We could apply the ‘Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’ model. Residential and care homes would be set up in those countries from which workers have been coming, along with the NHS medical facilities which residents and staff would need.

Why would it be any less acceptable to relocate patients across continents than to have carers undertake the reverse journey? Shouldn’t those needing this service, and wanting it provided at public expense, be prepared to accept it where it is most affordable? Perhaps those funding their own care, and wishing to preserve some of their estate for their children, would be among the first to take up such an option.