I’m baffled. I simply don’t understand it, so I’m going to write down what I think has been announced this week in an attempt to get some clarity.

This week, the UK government said that they were going to ‘crackdown’ on low-skilled visas, including visas for care workers, which means that care companies will no longer be able to recruit care workers from abroad. Instead, those companies will have to hire British nationals or from the pool of already-available care workers on visas. This is apparently all in an effort to reduce net migration, to have more control over immigration, and to make it easier for “high-skilled, high-contributing” people to live and work in the UK.

I’m not going to get into the politics of this plan, I’m more concerned about the stopping of visas for overseas care workers. The UK already has a big shortage of care workers, around 131,000 according to most estimates. That’s because care jobs are badly paid and extremely stressful, not exactly what you’d call an attractive employment proposition.

The folks in charge are aware of this, right? They also know that stopping care visas will increase that already-massive gap, yes? Is there a plan to address this?

Of course there is! PHEW.

Yvette Cooper has promised “to bring in a new fair pay agreement for care workers” to make care jobs more attractive to UK workers and reduce overseas demand.

Great– when is that happening? She didn’t specify.

So the plan is to deliberately make the caring situation worse? And have no plans to fix it? Got it.

I’m not trying to be difficult here, but this begs the question of who is going to do all the caring then? If we can’t recruit the folks from abroad who want to do the job and won’t make the job more attractive to those in the UK, who is going to look after us?

I didn’t find the answer to that question, because the answer is YOU. The Great British public will become a nation of unpaid carers. Even more than they already are.

I’m baffled by the relentless vilification of caring and care workers. Calling caring low-skilled is untrue and insulting; it is also an essential function in our society. Why is caring seen as subpar, unimportant work when we’ll all need it at some point in our lives?

Why can’t visas be categorised by what functions we need filling? Rather than framing it by what ‘skills’ we need. It feels like it would achieve the same thing, but you know, be a better approach. Incidentally, if this plan is to get more of these in-demand highly-skilled individuals into the country, it would be a good idea to make the UK an attractive place to live in. Unless the folks we’re trying to attract like queuing outside a GP’s surgery in the rain to be told they can’t see a doctor, taking a bus replacement service instead of a train, or sewage-filled water networks, I don’t see many reasons they’d want to live here in the first place. Welcome to Not So Great Britain.

What do I know though? I’m just a low-skilled carer. Yes, I work full time in a high growth sector of the economy, speak fluent English and French, and (rusty) Mandarin but the literally vital job all paid and unpaid carers do every single day is considered worthless and low-contributing on a visa application.

I’m baffled. Je suis déconcertée.我很困惑.