A Bangladeshi man who claimed he was coming to Britain as a care worker ended up serving curry in an Indian restaurant.
Ijaj Abid Redwan Hridoy, 26, arrived here in 2023 on a health care visa but Home Office immigration enforcement officers found him working at the Junoon Indian restaurant in the village of Helsby in Cheshire.
He was living in a caravan nearby.
Mr Hridoy had his visa revoked but later took the Home Office to court to judicially review the decision – and lost.
The case is a stark example of the abuse that has gripped the health and care worker visa scheme.
MPs have repeatedly raised concerns that the visa was widely taken advantage of by foreign nationals who had no intention of gaining employment as care workers, and who simply wanted to gain permission to enter Britain.
More than 760,000 foreign nationals, including dependants, have applied for health and care worker visas since the route was created in 2020.
Since July, care workers can no longer be recruited from overseas following changes to the Home Office’s rules.
Ijaj Abid Redwan Hridoy, who also goes by the name Ijaj Ahmed, poses outside the Junoon Indian restaurant in Helsby, Cheshire, in December 2023 – less than four months after he was granted a care worker visa by the Home Office
Ijaj Abid Redwan Hridoy posted this photograph of him arriving in the UK in September 2023, the month after he was granted permission to come to Britain on a health and care worker visa
Ijaj Abid Redwan Hridoy visiting London’s Tower Bridge in September 2023
The upper immigration and asylum tribunal ruling said Mr Hridoy had been ‘sponsored by Almag Healthcare Limited to work as a health care worker’ and entered Britain shortly after his visa was granted in August 2023.
It went on: ‘On July 13 2024, an immigration enforcement visit took place at Junoon Helsby Restaurant.
‘The applicant was encountered working there.
‘Both he and the restaurant manager were interviewed.
‘The applicant was considered to be in breach of the conditions of his visa and was detained and served with a notice explaining that he was liable to be removed from the UK.
‘His visa was cancelled. He was subsequently released.’
It added that Mr Hridoy ‘had admitted at the interview that he was working at Junoon Helsby as his main employment, since Almag did not give him regular work and he needed the money’.
‘Further, the applicant had stated that he could not show payments into his online bank account or evidence of work rotas for Almag, and that the payslips he had produced showed BACS payments, whereas the applicant had stated that he was paid in cash.
Ijaj Abid Redwan Hridoy also posted an image of himself visiting the London Eye in October 2023
In August last year Ijaj Abid Redwan Hridoy posted an image of himself at King’s Cross station in London
‘Further, the applicant had stated that he lived in London but worked in care in Nottingham, yet he was unable to provide proof of travel between the two cities and a search revealed that he lived in a caravan on site of Junoon Helsby and his passport was found in the caravan.
‘The arresting officer was therefore satisfied that the applicant’s main employment was at Junoon Helsby and not Almag, so that he was in breach of his visa conditions and his leave was lawfully cancelled.’
In October 2024, Mr Hridoy’s solicitors applied for judicial review of the decision on the grounds it was ‘irrational because the evidence relied upon was inadequate to support the conclusion that the applicant had breached his visa conditions’.
They also claimed the Home Office was ‘wrong to suggest that the applicant was not allowed to undertake work other than as a care worker, since supplementary employment was permitted under the immigration rules’.
However, Upper Tribunal Judge Susan Kebede ruled there was ‘no material misdirection of law by the respondent’, the Home Secretary, and ‘no procedural unfairness or breach of duty in the respondent’s decision-making process’.
The judge added: ‘There was nothing irrational, unreasonable or unlawful in the respondent’s decision to cancel the applicant’s permission to stay in the UK and to give notice of removal on the basis that she did and for the reasons given.’
The ruling went on to say that there were ‘clearly various credibility concerns about the applicant’s overall account of his employment with Almag’.
Mr Hridoy, who also uses the name Ijaj Ahmed, was granted a visa by the Home Office on August 9, 2023.
He posted a photo on his Facebook account of himself arriving at a British airport just over a month later, on September 16, 2023, with the caption: ‘Safely reached in the UK [sic].’
Eleven weeks after that, on December 1 2023, he posted another photo of himself standing outside the Junoon restaurant.
Staff at the restaurant refused to discuss their former colleague when they were visited by the Daily Mail this week.
A few days before Mr Hridoy’s tribunal hearing took place in August last year he posted a photo of himself at King’s Cross station in London.
It is not known whether he is still in the UK.
A Daily Mail investigation in 2024 found rogue operators were exploiting loopholes in the care visa system.
Scant checks in a bid to fill huge vacancies meant untrained and overworked staff, sometimes barely able to speak English, were left caring for the elderly in the understaffed sector.
The ‘cash for care jobs scandal’ found some outfits charged overseas applicants ‘work finder fees’ of up to £20,000 to help them get a visa allowing them to come – and stay – here.
Nadra Ahmed, chairman of the National Care Association, said at the time: ‘We’re seeing agencies sprouting up that are just bringing people in for the purpose of taking money off them.’
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: ‘The health and social care visa was massively abused by immigrants who lied to get into this country.
‘This shows how mass low-skilled immigration has to end.
‘We should not have any immigration for jobs like social care when there are nine million working-age people in the UK who are economically inactive.’
A Home Office spokesman said: ‘We have ended overseas recruitment for social care, following significant concerns of abuse.
‘An attempt to fill between 6,000 and 40,000 jobs in the sector led to the arrival of 616,000 individuals between 2022 and 2024.
‘The Home Secretary has been clear she will do whatever it takes to secure Britain’s borders. Those found to be working illegally will be arrested, detained, and removed.
‘Anyone abusing our hospitality should be warned – enforcement action is at the highest level in British history, with illegal working arrests up 63 per cent.’
