“This union stands for solidarity across nations, borders and workplaces.”
By UNISON
Calls for greater support and security for migrant workers in the NHS dominated the agenda at UNISON’s national health conference in Edinburgh this week.
Delegates heard powerful speeches from UNISON’s migrant members and unanimously passed several motions demanding that the Home Office and NHS improve conditions for the migrant workers who keep health and social care services running.
Nearly one in five NHS staff are non-British nationals, and almost half of newly registered nurses have been trained overseas. Delegates noted that, without migrants, the NHS would fall apart.
The first motion, ‘migration makes our NHS work’, called on the union to lobby the Home Office and Department of Health to ensure that NHS workers are protected in changes to visa salary thresholds and called on the NHS not to ‘abandon’ workers once visas expire.
Speaking in support of the motion that passed, one conference delegate said, “Migration does not weaken the NHS, migration is the reason it survives.”
Another speaker supporting the motion said: “Migrant workers are our colleagues and friends. They are the ones holding patients’ hands in the middle of the night, staying beyond their shift even when they are exhausted.
“Let’s show what a union looks like when we refuse to leave members behind”
Protecting migrant healthcare workers against harmful rhetoric
Conference delegates also passed a motion for the union to develop a UNISON NHS Migrant Workers Charter to pledge fair treatment, ethical recruitment, visa security, safe working conditions, equal pay and career progression, strong union rights and transparent accountability for all migrant workers across NHS employers.
Conference heard that one in three doctors and nurses working in the UK have been trained overseas. If the NHS had paid to train them it would have cost the government £100,000–£120,000 per doctor and over £20,000 per nurse. This adds up to a cumulative £14 billion saving to the NHS in training costs based on workers currently in post – which is a conservative estimate.
Supporting the motion on behalf of North Devon and Exeter health branch, Emmanuel Akinlose (pictured above) said: “Migrant workers are not a backup plan or a temporary fix, we are part of the foundation of this health service. Yet despite this, many of us continue to work under pressure.
“We face harmful rhetoric, we face immigration uncertainty. We face a system that sometimes makes us feel like we’re needed but not really wanted. How can the NHS depend on migrant workers, while migrant workers are made to feel disposable?”
Sustaining support for overseas nurses and midwives
Conference passed a motion committing the union to challenge the increasingly xenophobic narratives pushed by right-wing media platforms, which, accompanied by immigration policy proposals, are creating hostile working conditions for migrant members.
Introducing a motion on behalf of the nursing and midwifery occupational group, a speaker (pictured) said: “These are workers who sustain our NHS but are too often made to feel unwelcome in it.”
“They didn’t come to take anyone’s job, they came to fill the hundreds of thousands of vacancies that the NHS and social care systems have,” she said.
“We cannot talk about fixing the NHS without pushing away the people who are holding it together.”
‘Migrant workers are at the heart of our NHS’
Referring to migrant workers as ‘the heart’ of the NHS, another motion called on the union to challenge hostile immigration policies, which ‘will do nothing to rectify the crisis in public services, especially our NHS.’
The motion called for UNISON to urge the Home Office and NHS England to remove the increase to the visa salary threshold, which is the minimum annual salary that a foreign worker must be paid by a UK employer to qualify for a skilled worker visa.
One speaker supporting the motion described how low wages and the stress of visa insecurity are causing migrant workers in the NHS to collapse from exhaustion while on shift.
“Even when we are unwell, we go to work, because the bills do not stop. Migrant workers become overworked, exhausted, and stretched beyond safe limits. We’re expected to keep going without adequate rest, functioning like a machine rather than a human being.”
One speaker from Northamptonshire said: “Migrant workers have always been the beating heart of the NHS… We must fight so that the heart does not die. Because the body does not live if the heart is not beating.”
Support for Ukrainian refugees working in the UK
Ulster health branch introduced the motion that called for recognition of the contribution of Ukrainian refugees in UK health and social care, whose visas are insecure and contingent on the continued war in Ukraine.
The motion called for the union’s NEC to launch a campaign demanding that the UK government grant Ukrainian refugees who have worked in the UK’s health and social care system a secure, long-term immigration status (for example, indefinite leave to remain or a path to settlement), rather than limiting stay to the duration of war or temporary visas.
Ukrainian refugees have become part of the NHS workforce, contributing vital labour at a time of crisis in health and social care provision.
“Their immigration status is tied to the war. Their security rests on a scheme. That is not stability, it is not dignity, it is not fairness,” the speaker said.
“This union stands for solidarity across nations, borders and workplaces. This motion is rooted in our shared values of fairness, dignity and respect.”
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- This article was originally published by UNISON on 15 April 2026.
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