The men work dutifully, jet-washing cars and vans, soaping them up and drying them off again with a tatty chamois leather.
For just £7, it’s a thorough treatment, paused only momentarily when the team of six share a joke in their native language over bonnets and wheel arches.
As fine a job the boys at Kalar Car Wash do on this industrial estate close to Huddersfield town centre in West Yorkshire, one would be hard-pressed to describe their work as skilled labour.
Yet the car wash is one of more than 140,000 firms in Britain with a Home Office licence to sponsor visas intended to bring in ‘skilled workers’ from overseas.
Hundreds of kebab houses, chippies, chicken shops, vape shops, off-licences, barbers and a handful of hand car washes such as Kalar have successfully applied to become visa sponsors.
They pay just £611 for the privilege, which, in theory, allows them to hire ‘skilled workers’ from far-flung countries who are then given a visa to stay in Britain for up to five years.
After that, they can apply to remain here permanently.
The list of eligible occupations is lengthy but many are obviously designed to plug skills shortages in the country: engineers, doctors, biochemists (these vocations are rightly deemed ‘higher skilled’).
The Kalar Car Wash is one of more than 140,000 firms in Britain with a Home Office licence to sponsor visas intended to bring in ‘skilled workers’ from overseas
Hundreds of kebab houses, chippies, chicken shops, vape shops, off-licences and barbers also successfully applied to become visa sponsors
A brief glance at the list of ‘medium skilled’ occupations eligible for visas, however, shows some surprisingly humble roles.
Newsagents, ‘sales supervisors’, and the somewhat vague position of ‘shopkeeper’ are all medium-skilled jobs, according to the Government, making them very attractive propositions for those from abroad who would like to make a new life in Britain.
And who could blame them? Under the current guidelines, those arriving in the country on skilled worker visas must be paid a minimum salary, which is currently set at a rather comfortable £41,700 per year (the average UK salary is £39,000), or the ‘going rate’ for the job, whichever is higher. Sales directors, for instance, must be paid at least £60,000 per year, according to the Home Office.
Dozens of mosques and Hindu temples are also eligible to sponsor staff from overseas under similar ‘religious worker’ visas, which cost applicants just £340 and, if they are successful, allow them to stay in Britain for two years.
One such body, The Islamic Centre of England, in Maida Vale, west London, has a licence to sponsor skilled worker visas and was certainly doing so until as recently as 2022. It remains on the official register of visa sponsors, but it is currently the subject of an ongoing Charity Commission investigation for alleged close ties to the hardline Iranian regime.
Among the small print in the application process is one particular caveat – those applying for the visas must also have a solid grasp of English.
Which takes us back to Kalar Car Wash. When the Daily Mail visited last month to ask about the firm’s sponsorship of visas, none of the men could speak English other than to tell our reporter that ‘the boss’ was ‘on holiday’.
They were also unable to tell us whether they themselves had taken advantage of Britain’s generous visa system.
But with the business currently licensed to sponsor workers, with bosses having gone to the trouble of completing the application process, one may question which other skilled roles might be on offer.
Conservative MP Neil O’Brien told the Daily Mail that bringing in overseas workers for jobs in vape shops and car washes was ‘farcical’, adding the visa scheme was ‘yet another back door in our broken immigration system’.
MP Neil O’Brien said bringing in workers for jobs in vape shops and car washes was ‘farcical’, adding the visa scheme was ‘yet another back door in our broken immigration system’
The Home Office claims that since tightening up the skilled worker scheme last summer to focus on graduate-level professions – and increasing the minimum salary requirements – refusal rates have increased and businesses such as kebab shops are now unlikely to be eligible to sponsor workers.
Be that as it may, last month, the Daily Mail travelled across the country to investigate the skilled worker visa for ourselves and to ascertain whether it seems that its generous terms are being exploited.
The results would suggest that, despite the Labour government’s attempted crackdown, it remains a well-trodden route to Britain and highlights a largely overlooked crossroads where seemingly lax immigration rules meet our infamously bloated welfare state.
Leaning on the glass counter towards the rear of his Middlesbrough shop, surrounded by thousands of vapes of every size, colour and shape imaginable, Shehzad Iqbal, 41, is frank about his willingness to use the skilled worker visa.
His firm, Swift Mobiles and Vapes, has been eligible to sponsor workers for a number of years and currently has one employee on the scheme, who arrived in Britain two years ago from Mr Iqbal’s native Pakistan.
But, according to the shopkeeper – who has lived in the north-east town for 13 years – he is not averse to employing local people.
‘The people in the local area don’t want to work, honestly,’ he claims. ‘I advertised for staff on Facebook, I spoke to a few people and asked them to come in but they didn’t show up.’
He added that, in contrast, those employed from abroad ‘know they have to come and know they have to work’ to maintain their visa status.
‘It’s a good scheme,’ he said. ‘People who are coming, they are working perfectly. If there were people who wanted to work from here [Middlesbrough] I would be happy to get them.
‘But the problem is they don’t come, they just p***-take.’
Shopkeeper Shazad Iqbal has been eligible to sponsor workers for a number of years and currently has one employee on the scheme, who arrived in Britain two years ago from Pakistan
He admitted the basic salary might seem high for the work involved, which predominately involves fixing mobile phones and laptops as well as serving customers purchasing vapes, but added: ‘If you want to work, you can earn good money.
‘A lot of people want to chill out, want to stay on benefits. The Government has to stop benefits and then people would work.’
He said he is not currently looking to bring in more workers from overseas but ‘if we need to, we can do it’.
Perhaps somewhat more controversially, the skilled worker visa also allows the applicant’s partner and children to join them in Britain as ‘dependants’. The visa holder must show they have been working continually in a ‘medium- skilled’ role since at least July last year – and then their immediate family can join them.
Brothers Irfan and Irslan Rabani are genial company. Stripping boxes from pallets outside their Premier convenience store in Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, they are happy to discuss their route to Britain.
Irslan, 30, and Irfan, 28, successfully applied for skilled worker visas to work at the shop, which is owned by their brother, Adnan, 32. All three came to Britain from Pakistan.
When the Daily Mail visited last month, Home Office officials had just arrived and were discussing the business with the oldest brother.
Asked for their job titles, Irslan and Irfan describe themselves as ‘retail managers’. Handily, such an occupation is classed as ‘medium skilled’ by the Government and therefore eligible for the skilled worker visa scheme.
The title is vague enough to allow plenty of room for manoeuvre: the brothers describe how they stack shelves, serve customers and organise the rota for other employees.
Irslan and Irfan (pictured) applied for skilled worker visas to work at this Stockton Premier shop, which is owned by their older brother, Adnan. All three came to Britain from Pakistan
Stonegate’s shopkeeper claims she uses the scheme because she can’t employ staff locally, with prospective workers ‘coming in for a week, then they don’t return for the next’
Irslan says he earns around £26,500, which was the salary requirement until March 2024 and is far from the current minimum. There is no suggestion they have done anything wrong, as they were eligible to extend their visas under the old requirements.
Irfan first came to the UK to study at Coventry University in 2018 on a student visa, later switching to a skilled worker visa at his brother’s shop, he says.
Asked why the firm needs to hire from abroad rather than look to the local area, his response echoes Mr Iqbal’s from a few miles away in Middlesbrough.
‘I’ve been here for eight years and we haven’t had a single person, a local person, come and ask for a job,’ he says.
‘Not one. If no one comes to ask for a job I can’t go and knock on their door and say, “Come, please, work here.” So we have to hire from outside. It doesn’t make any sense.’
The criticisms may be a reflection of the benefits boom in Britain, with a record four million people claiming Personal Independence Payment (PIP) for disabilities in England and Wales as of April this year – 83 per cent of those are of working age.
Disability benefits, which can total up to £200 per week per person, are being paid out to a record number of people. This is largely due to an increasing number of claimants arguing that their ADHD or depression renders them unable to work.
The Bargain Stonegate off-licence on the outskirts of Leeds is a typical corner shop. Any jobs on offer are relatively rudimentary. But this business has also taken advantage of the skilled worker scheme – bringing in one shop assistant from India.
Again, the shopkeeper, also from India, claims the reason for doing this is because she can’t employ staff locally, with prospective workers ‘coming in for a week, then they don’t return for the next’.
Her employee also earns far less than the current minimum salary as she was hired before changes to the Home Office rules.
In Harrow, north London, another business – Sam’s Chicken – arranged to bring in 12 migrants on skilled worker visas to work at the chicken shop over a four-year period, GB News reported.
Mr O’Brien, a critic of the scheme, said: ‘The scale of abuse in the skilled worker visa system is becoming impossible to ignore.’
He criticised the possibility of ‘workers from abroad being brought in to work in vape shops and car washes while over a million young Britons are out of work and out of education’.
‘These are plainly not skilled jobs,’ he added. ‘And there are Brits here just as qualified to do them. This is yet another back door in our broken immigration system which the Government must act urgently to shut.’
It would appear the Government has two pressing issues.
Stopping Britain appearing as the land of milk and honey to those who want to come from overseas – while convincing the British that plugging gaps in the jobs market is a better option than relying on our notoriously generous benefits scheme.
To do that, some extraordinarily tough – and ruthless – decisions must be made.
A Home Office spokesman said: ‘Thanks to our decisive action to raise the skilled salary threshold, these kinds of businesses are incredibly unlikely to get a licence approved.
‘Companies must apply for the appropriate sponsor licence. The holding of a licence does not guarantee that it is in use nor that any sponsored visa application will be approved by the Home Office following a rigorous assessment process.
‘Holding a sponsorship licence is no guarantee of a visa and all licences are determined on a case-by-case basis.
‘To further protect the system from abuse, more than 100 occupations have been cut from overseas recruitment access.
‘Meanwhile, skilled sponsor revocations went up by 950 per cent in 2025 compared to 2023.’
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