The Northolt Road in Harrow is Britain’s Visa Street.
In the last five years, 27 businesses on this one road in northwest London have arranged to bring in up to 84 migrants on skilled worker visas.
With Britons still processing the surge of mass immigration since the disastrous changes under the previous Conservative Government, more and more GB News viewers have been in touch to share their concerns about their areas changing almost overnight.
Hearing these issues raised by our audience – our eyes and ears across the country – piqued my interest.
After speaking to some top-tier data analysts, it was clear that Northolt Road stood out.
Dozens of businesses on this road have made the most of the relaxed opportunities made available to them.
One of these businesses alone, Sam’s Chicken, has 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, at an address on this road.
The visas were issued for “sales Supervisors” and “retail managers”.
When we paid them a visit, the manager, herself a migrant worker, confirmed they had hired foreigners to work in the chicken shop.
When pressed as to why they weren’t hiring British people for these jobs, the manager said that she hired some local people, but that many Britons “don’t want to work in chicken shops.”
She added that the franchise was “happy” that the Government was giving skilled worker visas to shops like hers.
The bustling lunchtime shift at the shop saw plenty of families pop in for a bite.
Standing for an hour on the busy road, another important but often overlooked element of the worker visas came to mind.
They don’t just allow a worker to come – you can usually bring your whole family too.
On this one stretch of road, these 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.
Many of the visas for jobs on the Northolt Road were granted before the rules were changed. Over 700,000 work visas were renewed last year. Over 111,000 skilled worker visas on the tougher standards were handed out in 2025.
Another business on the road, a Nepalese supermarket, told GB News that it does not hire any Britons. But it has granted two skilled worker visas, also before the tougher regulations came in.
The owner told us he hired more Nepalese people because he wanted to bring more people to Britain from Nepal and that they understood the cuisine.
“This is a dream,” he said. “Dreamland… They are dreaming for the UK.”
There’s no suggestion that these businesses have done anything wrong.
This investigation has shown just how straightforward it has been for so many high street businesses to tap into mass immigration rather than make the most of our unemployed workforce.
There are plenty of would-be grafters knocking about in northwest London who would likely be unimpressed to see non-British business owners and managers saying that locals don’t want to do the jobs they are offering.
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I suspect it would be especially galling to hear that if the same businesses said that they explicitly wanted to hire from overseas.
The Home Office explicitly rules out certain occupations from the skilled worker visa opportunities.
Sales and retail assistants, retail cashiers and checkout operators, hairdressers and barbers, beauticians and related occupations, nail technicians, dry cleaners… These jobs are all ineligible.
Takeaway managers and proprietors are listed as “medium skilled,” but they’re still not eligible for skilled worker visas, because there’s no shortage of British citizens to do the work.
Experts have warned, however, that there is often little oversight on wages and occupations once a visa is granted.
The Home Office has pointed out that the number of those old visas issued is down one-third on last year.
But Tory MP Neil O’Brien told me that the situation was “absurd.”
He said “our generosity is being abused and that the whole system needs to be totally replaced.”
“The economic case for mass migration has completely collapsed.”
The shadow minister warned: “Labour can see that there is massive abuse happening in front of their noses.
“Shabana Mahmood’s stance is not to toughen up, but to open up a new ‘safe and legal routes’ refugee scheme, which will bring in tens of thousands from the world’s trouble spots.”
The Home Office said it was cracking down on visa fraud, revoking 3,299 sponsor licences in 2025, compared with just 347 in 2023. That’s an increase of 950 per cent.
Civil servants have cut 100 occupations from overseas recruitment access, which includes businesses such as vape shops and takeaways. But what about the visas already granted? Is there a plan to cut them or prevent their renewal?
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has tried to make some limited changes to the indefinite leave to remain timelines and has faced a chorus of rage from her liberal colleagues on the Labour benches.
It seems unlikely that they would ever let her push for a solution to this surge in cheap Labour.
The Home Office, meanwhile, has said that it is tackling the explosion in skilled worker visas. The number of those visas issued is down one-third on last year.
But the number of companies allowed to sponsor skilled worker visas is rising again.
In the last month alone, the number of businesses allowed to sponsor visas has increased by more than 500.
Whatever the Government may hope, Visa Street is still very much open to traffic.