The UK Government have recently announced their latest proposals to reduce immigration into Britain. It’s worth noting that over the past 14-15 years, or even further back politicians from across the spectrum have announced that they have a sure fire plan to get net migration back down to the tens of thousands.
The current proposals follow on sharply from the Government’s defeat in the Supreme court over their proposals to transfer asylum seekers to Rwanda and include proposed changes to that policy which they hope will satisfy the courts. However, the primary focus has been on reducing economic migration. The approach here seems to be to try and make immigration more expensive. This includes setting new a new threshold of £38,000 income for those seeking to acquire a visa as a skilled worker or to marry bring their spouse into the country on a marriage visa. Additionally, students will no longer be able to bring their families with them.
In my opinion, these proposals are unlikely to have much of an impact on immigration figures and have the potential to do harm along the way. They fail to understand, how employment recruitment works, how immigration works how wage inflation works and how the market economy works.
First, think about what happened the last time you had a job interview. Did you go into the room and pitch for your job? If you have recruited employees, did you ask the candidates to submit their proposals and then identify the one who offered the lowest cost to you? Of course not, that isn’t how job interviews work. Rather, a post is offered with a salary. So, the idea that immigration is to do with foreign workers undercutting native workers is a strange concept. The Government don’t seem to know much about either employers or immigrants.
Secondly, consider the implications of setting new thresholds? In effect, those thresholds are creating an additional, upper limit minimum or living wage for skilled workers and graduates. This is important because when potential employees in high demand sectors where there are known skills shortages are offered jobs, they can now demand significantly higher wages knowing that employees cannot look elsewhere.
Thirdly, consider the implications for universities of the measures relating to students. It has always seemed confusing to me that students are included in the immigration figures, we don’t include people who are here in holiday, why do we include people who are here for a fixed period of time and during that time are paying for the privilege of being here? However, instead, the government appears determined to make it harder for universities to recruit students from overseas. This will reduce potential income for many universities. This means that they will either need to increase their fees for domestic students, requiring the cap to be raised from its current £9000 or they will have to reduce costs and in some cases this may well even lead to bankruptcy.
It’s worth noting that consistently the government’s approach to immigration is to target two types of immigrant, first, those who are here seeking refuge and secondly those who are in a position to make a contribution to society here as well as benefitting themselves. The government seems to be lacking both in compassion and common sense.
Faithroots 