Migrant hubs are being used to provide channels into Britain, as the Home Office has planned to approve dubious firms as "licensed sponsors."

The Home Office has licenced 118,000 firms as "sponsors of skilled workers" into the UK.

GB News, alongside Stand for Our Sovereignty and Brexit Facts4EU, has taken a look at some of the stranger jobs being used as migrant hubs.

Five years ago, the total number of organisations officially registered with the Home Office was around 30,000.

Today there are 118,000 of them, of all kinds.

For clarification, these are organisations approved by the Home Office as sponsors of "skilled workers," who then get visas to enter the country legally.

The extent to which these migrants are checked up on is not reported in any of the reports GB News, Facts4Eu or Stand for our Sovereignty were able to find, but there is an enforcement arm so it is possible that such records exist.

The charts has shown the number of sponsoring organisations has skyrocketed

The number of new applications per quarter to become a "registered sponsor" of a "skilled worker" in the first 12 months since Labour came to power has skyrocketed.

In the third quarter of 2024, this stood at 9,139. In the final quarter of that year, that number of new applications dipped slightly to 8,887.

In the first quarter of 2025, the number of new applications dipped again to 8,499. However, by the second quarter, this had risen again to 8,664.

The total of new applications for registered sponsors stands at 35,189.

The approval rate for skilled workers

In the first 12 months of a Sir Keir Starmer-led Government, out of the 35,189 applications, 28,019 were approved.

This leads to a success rate of 79.6 per cent.

One of the spreadsheets the Home Office keeps but does not publish as part of its usual quarterly output is a list of the 118,000 organisations it has approved as sponsors of skilled workers.

The Stand for Our Sovereignty’s and Facts4EU team’s analysis included a review of this very long list.

The representation of jobs per sponsoring organisations

With that caveat in mind, here are the approximate numbers found by Stand for Our Sovereignty’s and Facts4EU.

According to the figures, there were around 400 mini-cabs and delivery companies, roughly 700 halal businesses, just under 500 takeaway or catering businesses, almost 1,000 corner shops/minimarkets, about 300 hair shops/barbers and over 2,000 cafes, hotels or restaurants.