The number of UK visas issued to nurses from abroad has dropped by 80% over the past 12 months, Home Office figures have revealed.
Health and Care Worker visas given to both main and dependent applicants also fell 77% in the year ending June 2025.
There was a total of 182,553 work related visas granted over the same period - a 36% drop on the previous year, Home Office data published on Thursday shows.
Just over 20,500 Health and Care Worker visas were handed to foreign workers in the year ending June 2025 – down from 89,095 the year before.
The number of visas issued to migrants in a Caring Personal Service occupation fell by 88% to 7,378.
Nursing Professionals fell by 80% to 3,080 over the year, which the Government suggested was due to “the end of the centrally supported nurse international recruitment programme and changes in demand for international staff”.
Further visa rules for care providers, workers and students were introduced by the Government earlier this year.
Employers must prioritise hiring foreign carers already living in England before recruiting from overseas.
Since April, care providers who wish to recruit staff from abroad have had to first prove that they attempted to employ someone already in the country who needs new visa sponsorship.
The minimum salary required for Skilled Worker visas was also being increased in April, from £23,200 per year to £25,000 (or £12.82 per hour) to reflect the rise in minimum wage.
New proposals that will mean care workers on sponsored visas will need to remain in the UK for 10 years before gaining the right to live and work here indefinitely. This is double the current requirement of five years.
The Government hopes the measures would help "end the reliance on overseas recruitment" and bring down record levels of immigration to Britain.
But health care professionals have warned the rules put more strain on a sector already struggling to retain workers.
It comes as it was revealed the number of asylum applications in the UK has reached a new record high while the backlog in cases has dropped below 100,000 for the first time in four years.
A total of 111,084 people applied for asylum in the UK in the year to June 2025, the highest number for any 12 month period since current records began in 2001.
The number is up 14% from 97,107 in the year to June 2024, according to figures published by the Home Office.
Of the claims, 39% were made by people who arrived in the UK after crossing the English Channel.
A researcher said there are several potential reasons for the rise in asylum applications.
Nuni Jorgensen, from the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, said and increase in people smuggling and a “larger numbers of people claiming asylum after arriving on visas” could be partly behind the rise.
"It is hard to know to what extent the repeal of the previous government's asylum policies has contributed, not least because those policies were never fully implemented and their impact was unclear”, she added.
The record level of applications comes as the backlog of people waiting for an initial decision on their claims dropped to 90,812 at the end of June.
This is down 17% from 109,536 at the end of March and down 24% from 118,882 a year earlier at the end of June 2024.
The total peaked at 175,457 at the end of June 2023, which was the highest figure since current records began in 2010.
