Facing deportation - over 87p an hour

Thousands of care workers from overseas could be forced to leave the UK under new rules set by the government. Simon Hattenstone meets one woman desperately battling to save her job - and her family
Sandy, care worker and immigrant
'Sometimes I can hear my daughter crying. I feel so guilty because I brought her over here,' says Sandy. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi
Sandy loved her job. Yes, she was paid only £6.15 an hour, yes, it was hard work and required enormous patience, but she was born to care for people. She blushes and says she's not being boastful, but she knows she was good at it. "People would say, 'Are you on tonight, Sandy? Are you on tomorrow? Oh brilliant.' They trust me because I love my work. Some of these people haven't got family - no children, no family. They trust me, because they know I do this job with my heart."

After four years in a Southern Cross care home, helping elderly people get on with their lives, Sandy, who is from China, was planning to apply for indefinite leave to remain in Britain. She assumed it would be a foregone conclusion. After all, she was doing vital work, paying her taxes, and her daughter was slap-bang in the middle of A-levels.

But in July this year she received a letter from the Home Office. It stated that senior care workers no longer qualified for work permits. The Home Office had re-assessed the job, decided it was insufficiently skilled to warrant a permit, and that Sandy would have to return to China in October.

Sandy, 39, is one of up to 20,000 permit-holding senior care workers in this country affected by this ruling. When the letters went out, there were protests from senior care workers, the trade union Unison and the private companies affected. This was unfair, they said; if the government was going to introduce new criteria, it should be applied to new migrants and not implemented retrospectively.

The biggest provider of independent care and nursing homes in the country, the Southern Cross Healthcare Group, even took the highly unusual step of producing its own news report about the crisis in care that might lead to 1,000 of its workers being forced to leave the country. Chief executive Philip Scott said: "The reality is indigenous staff don't want to work in senior care positions so the assumption that these positions will automatically be filled by locals is not true." Local people do not want to do such work because the pay is so poor.

On August 13, the Home Office returned with a compromise solution. Senior care workers could stay in Britain but only if they were paid the seemingly random figure of £7.02 an hour. Sandy thought she was saved. But she wasn't. "I thought Southern Cross would simply pay up the extra 87p an hour." She appealed to Southern Cross head office in Darlington. Sorry, the company said, we can't pay the extra.

Sandy's real name is Jing Zhou. How she became Sandy tells you everything you need to know about her. After her first week working at the Southern Cross's Tower Bridge care centre in London, she realised that the elderly residents were having trouble with her name. "Sometimes they'd follow behind me and try to call me, but they couldn't remember, so I say let me just give you this name, and make it easy for people." How did she decide on Sandy? She giggles. "Oh, I just looked in the dictionary of English names and it's the first name I saw."

It was a rather tougher decision to leave her home city, Tinh Jin, in 2003. She had a good job as a senior nurse, she says, and she looked after her parents who were in poor health. Initially, Sandy came over by herself to study English, leaving behind her husband Shao Chun and daughter Yang Win. In October 2003, she was given a four-year work permit and was hired by Southern Cross at the Tower Bridge centre.

She was lonely and guilt-ridden (while she was here her mother had a stroke and died), but she believed she was securing her daughter's future - Yang Win was academically gifted, and Sandy dreamed of the educational opportunities Britain would give her. In 2004, Shao Chun and Yang Win joined her. The understanding was that, after four years, she would qualify for indefinite leave to remain.

Yang Win settled quickly, made friends and did extremely well at school. After completing her GCSEs she joined a grammar school for sixth form where she studied sciences and maths. Even though Shao Chun, a lab technician in China, had to work as a porter in England and found it hard to settle, both he and Sandy were convinced they were doing what was best for their daughter. Yang Win had dreamed of going to a university in Britain, possibly Cambridge or Oxford, since she was 13.

Last year, the government threw the first spanner in the works. It announced that only people who had held permits for five years could apply for indefinite leave to remain. Even so, Sandy assumed this would simply mean a one-year renewal, and six months ago, she told Southern Cross that her visa was coming up for renewal. No problem, they said, it will be a formality. Then in July the government made its shock announcement about the non-renewal of permits for senior care workers. Even though the compromise was announced a month later, it made little practical difference.

As the trade union Unison points out, the vast majority of senior care workers are paid between £6 and £6.50 an hour and the Home Office must have been aware that employers such as Southern Cross were unlikely to agree to a wage rise of around 20%. To many, it looks as if the figure of £7.02 was simply a means of transferring the blame to the private companies.

The Home Office does not attempt to hide the fact that the change in legislation is a means of managing migration. Indeed, they trumpet it. "The work permit arrangements are designed to strike a balance between allowing employers to recruit people with the skills they need, while protecting employment opportunities for resident workers," says Lin Homer, chief executive of the Border and Immigration Agency.

But there aren't enough British people who want the jobs. Where Sandy works, there is only one British-born worker on the 70-strong staff. The government has said that it expects the shortfall to be met by European workers.

Officials claim £7.02 is not a random amount - it's an average figure for what non-permit-holding resident senior care workers earn. Scott says this is "just nonsense", and condemns the Home Office approach as "arbitrary" and "discriminatory". On average, he says, his senior care workers get paid 70p more than the minimum wage (which has just increased to £5.52). Along with other care companies, Southern Cross is lobbying to have the government ruling overturned. "I absolutely believe the Home Office have set a rate that they know we cannot pay ... it is only about trying to increase the numbers for deportation."

But why can't Southern Cross simply up the rate of pay? "The reason we won't pay the £7.02 an hour is because we won't discriminate against other members of staff," he says. "If we gave £7.02 an hour to these particular staff then we have to do the same to every other grade of staff. It would run into millions. It would really make the difference between a company that is trading profitably and not." In the six months up to April 1 2007, Southern Cross profits rose 42% to £21.8m.

What does he say to overseas workers who felt the company was behind them but now feel betrayed? "I can understand that, but staff have to understand that in not paying the rate we are trying to be fair and equal to every member of the staff, not just members of staff affected by this."

But Unison is not having any of this. "The care home sector is dogged by low pay and that has lead to enormous difficulties recruiting and retaining staff. Southern Cross is making a very good profit and staff should have some share in that success," says spokeswoman Anne Mitchell. "It must be in the companies' interest to agree to a review of pay structures across the board in order to retain dedicated staff like Sandy."

As the government and private care companies continue to play blame-pinball, Sandy's life has been ripped apart. She recently told Yang Win that they might be forced to leave Britain any day, and says that her daughter is devastated.

"Sometimes when I'm cooking in the kitchen I can hear her crying in her bedroom. I feel so guilty because I brought her over here." Tears are running down her cheeks. She smiles, apologetically. Does Yang Win say it's her fault? "No, she's good girl. She doesn't blame me. She just cries. I'm her mother, I can't stand it. I can't eat properly, and I have to dye my hair." She lifts her hair to show me the grey. She has lost 8kg over the past couple of months, she says.

Sandy doesn't understand how a government that claims to care for people could introduce such a policy. The thing is, she says, you can't simply replace experienced care workers with anybody sufficiently desperate for money to do the job. She thinks the government will come to realise this, but by then it might be too late for the vulnerable people in the homes and it will certainly be too late for Sandy and her family.

On October 3, Sandy had to stop working. She has been offered a post by another company for £7.50 an hour, but the Home Office has refused her a permit, arguing this is a new job rather than a traditional extension and that she has not got the correct qualifications. She says she feels desperate, and is challenging the decision on both fronts. If that fails, she will have to leave the country or face deportation. Unless the government has a rethink, thousands of senior care workers will follow her.

Online petition asking the government to allow the care workers to stay