British media reports said under a new policy, non-European staffs earning less than £35,000 after six years in Europe are to be kicked out and return to their home country.
According to the Royal College of Nursing, as many as 30,000 nurses are expected to leave the country by 2020 causing NHS chaos.
"The immigration rules will cause chaos for the NHS and other care services…at a time when demand is increasing; the UK is perversely making it harder to employ staff from overseas. It can't be morally or ethically right but will also have a huge impact on the ability of the health service to carry on the way it has," said Peter Carter, General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing.
The majority of these nurses come from the Philippines which provided a steady supply of nurses for many decades. According to the UK Department of Employment, 20,226 work permits were issued to Filipinos whose work are in hospitals and welfare homes as nurses and hospital auxiliaries.
A separate report on BBC News said data from the Nursing & Midwifery Council indicate that the Philippines has the highest number of foreign health workers in the UK at more than 20,000 nurses this year.
Joss Bell, NHS campaigner & chair of the Socialist Health Association in London criticized the planned law, saying many nurses do not earn such a salary as most nurses were paid between £21,000 and £28,000 a year.
"Migrant nurses are generally very popular with patients as they give excellent care. If they are sent home, it will leave a dangerous gap," she added.
National Health Services (NHS) showed that these nurses must be promoted to a senior nurse position or made either a nurse consultant or matron to make the required £35,000.
A Home Office spokesman said: "As the Prime Minister has made clear, the Government wants to reduce the demand for migrant labour. We changed the settlement rules in 2011 to break the link between coming to work in the UK and staying here permanently."
Currently around 1 in 5 of the 34,000 new nurses who join the health service each year are from overseas, mainly the Philippines, Spain and Portugal.
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