Welcome to Britain's 'Visa Street' - the road where 27 businesses brought in up to 350 migrants on skilled worker visas

One street in Britain, dubbed 'Visa Street', has seen businesses bring in hundreds of migrants on skilled migrant visas.

GB News' exclusive analysis has found that in the last five years, 27 businesses on Northolt Road in Harrow have arranged sponsorship certificates to bring in up to 84 migrants on skilled worker visas.

One of these businesses, Sam’s Chicken, arranged to bring in at least 12 migrants on skilled worker visas over a four-year period.

They’re all registered to one branch operated by a single franchisee. When we paid them a visit, the manager, herself a migrant worker, confirmed they had arranged 12 visas.

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She told GB News: "Local people don't want to work in chicken shops" and that she was "happy" with the process.

But those visas don’t just allow the worker to come – they also allow workers to bring their whole family too.

That one chicken shop could be responsible for bringing in perhaps 50 people.

On one little stretch of the Northolt Road, the businesses could have brought in up to 350 migrants.

Since June 2024, to get a skilled worker visa, the job you’re coming to do here needs to pay you at least £41,700 a year, with a few exceptions.

But most of the businesses on the northwest London road – corner shops, hairdressers, and massage parlours – arranged their visas before the changes.

Another business on the road, a supermarket, does not hire any Britons. But it has arranged two skilled worker visas.

The owner told GB News he hired more Nepalese people because he wanted to bring more people to Britain.

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"We want to bring the people, you know, the people ... they want to come to UK, England, they want to settle here.

"This is a dream. Dreamland ... So they are dreaming for the UK."

On the official Home Office list of occupations which qualify for skilled worker visas, sales and retail assistants, retail cashiers and checkout operators, hairdressers and barbers, beauticians and related occupations, nail technicians, dry cleaners are all ineligible.

Takeaway managers and proprietors are listed as "medium skilled", but they’re not eligible for skilled worker visas, because there’s no shortage of British citizens to do the work.

However, these businesses are not breaking the law. They are doing what is permitted under the rules, and many of them brought in workers before the salary threshold was raised.

The Home Office says it is cracking down on this, revoking 3,299 sponsor licences in 2025, compared with just 347 in 2023 – an increase of 950 per cent.

The department also says it’s tackling the explosion in skilled worker visas. The number of those visas issued is down one-third on last year.

But last year, the Government still gave out 111,000 visas. It also renewed a further 700,000 work visas granted under the old, more relaxed rules.

Many of them will be for work in businesses on the Northolt Road, where the jobs don’t always seem skilled at all.

The number of companies allowed to sponsor skilled worker visas is rising again. Last month, it jumped by more than 500.

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