An overseas A&E doctor who has trained and worked in the UK for a decade has said she is ‘appalled’ by Nigel Farage’s plan to scrap indefinite leave to remain if Reform is elected
An overseas A&E doctor who has trained and worked in the UK for a decade has said she is “appalled” by Nigel Farage’s plan to scrap indefinite leave to remain (ILR).
Dr Jinnie Shin, 44, who is from Boston, US, said she is trying not to worry about whether she’d be forced to leave as she is hoping the “preposterous” plans don’t go ahead.
The American medic said she moved to the UK in 2015 to work in the renowned NHS after a career change from biomedical science to medicine.
Jinnie, who qualified as a doctor in 2019 and worked through the pandemic in the NHS, currently has a Tier 2 skilled worker visa and would be looking to apply for ILR within the next year.
READ MORE: Nigel Farage indefinite leave to remain plan torn apart as NHS would ‘collapse’
But Mr Farage on Monday announced that if Reform UK is elected he would scrap ILR, which would not only remove the main route to citizenship for migrants but would also put hundreds of thousands of people legally settled in the UK at risk. Unions representing NHS and care workers warned that overseas staff were critical to keeping the NHS running.
Jinnie, who lives in East Hertfordshire with her European partner who she met in London, said Reform UK’s plan has made her feel “unwelcome” in the country she has lived in for the last 10 years.
“I was quite frankly appalled. I think that IMG (International Medical Graduate) doctors, doctors who come here to work in the NHS, bring a richness of experience and are really the backbone of the NHS.
“And to be dismissive of their contributions is horrifying. That was my initial gut reaction. My second reaction was, how on earth are they going to keep the NHS running?”
Jinnie pointed to figures showing that 36% of doctors were non-UK nationals in the NHS last year. With the health service already facing huge workforce shortages, it has been warned that the NHS could be on the brink of collapse if thousands of staff members, from doctors to nurses, were forced to leave the UK.
“If you just decide that you’re going to deny ILR to all these people, it’s just going to make an already strained system even worse,” Jinnie said. “I don’t see how the NHS could survive that.”
She also pointed out that she did her training in the NHS, so forcing her to leave would be a loss to British taxpayers.
Asked how she feels about the future, Jinnie said: “I’d like to think that this idea to strip ILR from people like me is so preposterous that it won’t happen.”
A Reform UK spokesman said: “Under our plans, anyone that currently has ILR will be eligible to apply for a five-year renewable visa. Reform will also issue Acute Skills Shortage Visas (ASSV) where there is clear evidence of acute shortages in national-critical roles, such as in the NHS.”
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