Special Report: The fake families being smuggled into the UK

With legal migration to the UK reaching unprecedented levels Sky News can reveal allegations that criminal gangs are putting people on planes and trafficking them by exploiting skilled worker visas. We call this woman Mrs. When we meet, she urgently seeks legal advice, claiming that only one of the victims that she handed over extraordinary amounts of money to come to the UK to fill vacant positions in Britain. She had no idea this was going to happen. The lady says she paid what she thought were recruiters in Sri Lanka a huge sum of £65,000 to get a job in Britain as a carer when I went to the airport they gave me the work permit and the ticket and a child The lady says that at the airport the recruiters gave her a 12-year-old boy she had never seen before and told him he had to travel with her.

She says they used a

fake

Sri Lankan passport for the boy and falsely claimed he was her dependent so he could travel on the work visa they had gotten him. It was at the last minute. I felt very scared. but I couldn't do anything about it. I did not understand much. It was only after arriving in the UK that I realized it had been a big mistake. Mrs I says that when they landed at Heathrow airport, the child was greeted by people she did not know. She knows it and she never saw him again. Sky News has been told of several similar cases where she is abusing the right to rely on a skilled worker visa.

Just a few weeks ago, another woman also allegedly flew to London on a work visa and brought three people posing as her husband and children, the woman in that case has now disappeared, but our investigation has led us north in search of the woman's

fake

family. We tracked the man purported to be her husband to Staffordshire and identified him as a 48-year-old Sri Lankan rice farmer who is now seeking asylum. I won't eat all of Tencent so as not to leave Mom, do you see the best I can? Her name is rather it says that she paid someone she calls an agent fifty thousand pounds to take him to the United Kingdom, where she was told that she would have a job and after a couple of years of residence in the foreign.

How easy do people in Sri Lanka think it is to exploit the British visa system to try to trace the false dependency listed on that UK work visa we have? We find Sri Lankans scattered across the UK in Liverpool. We've tracked down the boy who says agents made him travel as Rather's fake son. This is 19 year old Hinthujin. He now lives with relatives in the cities. Sri Lankan Community. He has a small and scared figure. He says his family had made arrangements for him to come to the UK, but he had no idea that he would have to pretend to be dependent on a stranger until he arrived at Colombo airport.

There are now questions about the way visas are issued. It is extremely alarming and worrying that we have a system that does not detect exploitation at this level and there needs to be some way for head office to review their systems to see what is not working here, but remember Ms. A, a who we met urgently in the office of a lawyer in need of legal help his trip to the United Kingdom not only raises accusations about people trafficking, there are now questions about the regulation of the visa system for skilled workers. The lady received a residence permit in the United Kingdom, although she does not meet the only requirement to come. to the UK from abroad to work as a carer speak English Sky News obtained these documents used to support Ms A's job application by so-called recruiters who were paid by her own legal adviser told us the documents are completely false The Mrs A never completed a three-year diploma in nursing or passed exams in physics, biology and chemistry these forged certificates Claim that Mrs A got a very good pass in an English language exam Mrs A's fake CV boasts Having spent seven years providing direct nursing care to patients in a busy hospital ward environment and two years providing care to patients in a nursing home, she says she has skills in safe patient handling and first aid.

Nothing of this is true. Almost 150,000 people arrived in the UK last year on skilled worker visas. In February 2022, carers were included on the government's list of jobs to be filled; It was the opening of the labor market after Brexit that also brought this family to the seat of the United Kingdom, but Vinothan, his wife and his two young children now live there. spare room from someone they know because she says the job she thought she was going to do didn't work out. Vinothan says he received a letter saying he had secured a position as a care support worker for 40 hours a week on induction day.

He was given a uniform, but he claims he was not told before leaving Sri Lanka that he would have to undertake unpaid training for an unspecified period of time before getting paid work. He is now in dispute with the company. Her sponsorship certificate to work in the UK has been cancelled. Nathan says he paid people in Sri Lanka £26,000 to get the job, his entire family's savings, so you thought they were recruiters, you didn't know there were criminal gangs when you gave them the money, but why did they do it? ? Do you think recruiters would charge you £26,000 because I asked them because it's a very large amount?

I thought I would actually get my Visa. I care about the job expectation, which means that it is a very, very large amount for us from Sri Lanka because my grandparents, my grandmothers, Joyas, two, three generations, have earned it inside, they have nothing, now they have deceived everything, we have spoken with the two companies that They separately sponsored Ms A and Vanoton to come to the UK and insist that he has done nothing wrong and has no connection to the people of Sri Lanka which is why Ms A and Vanothan say they gave money. The consequence of all this is that skilled work visa recipients are ending up in the British asylum system.

The Home Office says it is reviewing skilled workers. worker visa process as a result of our

report

, a spokesperson said we are actively investigating the claims made. Abuse of our immigration system will not be tolerated. Anyone who has used false documents, misrepresented their personal circumstances or practices deception by any other means, we will have the application. refused Britain's fragile asylum system has even more complex cases to resolve so those who gave large sums of money in the hope of securing a new life in Britain did not expect things to turn out well Lisa Holland Sky News