UK Immigration To Work On New Rules And Policy Changes For Effective Immigration

08 Sep 2010

UK Immigration Minister Damian Green said that the government will ensure that the UK maximises the benefits of immigration.

On 6^th evening, when speaking to the Royal Commonwealth Society, the minister commented that UK has always benefited from immigration, but 'will only continue to do so if it is properly controlled'. He added that ‘This means that the unsustainable levels of net migration seen in recent years must be brought down.’

He said that a new research report called ‘The migrant journey’ has been released so that the government is determined to make decisions based on evidence. This report analyses the behavior of immigrants who came to UK in 2004 in all routes except visitor routes. The largest group of migrants was students with around 186,000 granted visas. More than 20 per cent of them were still in the UK even after 5 years.

Mr.Green said, “' We need to understand more clearly why a significant proportion of students are still here more than 5 years after their arrival. And we also need a system which can scrutinise effectively, and if necessary take action against, those whose long-term presence would be of little or no economic benefit.'

The other concern was with regards to evidence that some migrants coming in under the Tier 1 highly skilled work route are not doing specialised jobs. And he added: 'I was also struck by some of the individual applications I saw under the [Tier 2] skilled worker category: people running takeaway restaurants and production-line workers on salaries in the low £20,000s. These are not the sort of jobs we talk about when we think of bringing in skilled immigrants who have talents not available among our own workforce or the unemployed.

'We will not make Britain prosperous in the long term by telling our own workers "don't bother to learn new skills, we can bring them all in from overseas".'

The minister described planned changes to the immigration system (including an annual limit on workers from outside the European Union) may be 'controversial' but necessary:

'We absolutely need sustainable immigration levels. This will relieve pressure on public services, and stop immigration being such a delicate political issue.

'At the same time, we must be confident enough to say Britain is open for business and study to those who will make this a better country, and a more open society.'