Theresa May to announce migration cap plans
by editor | 2010-11-23 10:03 am
Home secretary to announce the level of the government’s planned cap on number of migrant workers coming to Britain from outside the EU
Press association
The level of the government’s proposed immigration cap will be announced today.
Experts on the migration advisory committee (MAC) recommended last week that the number of migrant workers coming to Britain from outside the EU should be cut to between 37,400 and 43,700 next year, down between 13% and 25% compared with 2009.
But the government’s advisers warned that students and family visas will also have to be slashed if the government is to fulfil its pledge to bring net migration down from 196,000 to the tens of thousands by 2015.
The number of students coming to Britain from outside the EU will also need to be cut, perhaps by more than 87,000, as will the number of people travelling to the UK for working holidays and those who come to work as domestic servants or on creative and media visas.
Work-related migration accounts for just 20% of the overall reduction needed for the government to reach its target, meaning non-EU students must make up 60% of the cut with the final 20% coming from family visas and their dependants, the MAC said.
Two-thirds of the non-EU migrants who enter the UK come on student visas, with more than half of these studying courses below degree level.
Theresa May, the home secretary, said she would crack down on non-EU students coming to privately-funded colleges and to study courses that were below degree-level as she seeks to make eligibility criteria for visas more selective.
But in a key speech on immigration earlier this month she added that she will do nothing to prevent those coming to study degree-level courses.
Professor David Metcalf, the MAC chairman, said skilled workers with job offers, who enter the UK on tier-two visas under the points-based system, should be prioritised over tier-one visas for highly skilled workers without a job offer.
And a new provision could be made for non-EU scientists under tier-one of the visa system to address the concerns of universities who fear that the cap could make it harder for the UK to attract the world’s best researchers, he said.
The limit proposed by the MAC included a cap on intra-company transfers (ICTs), which are used by firms to bring their own people into the country to do specific jobs and account for 22,000 of the 36,000 tier-two visas.
To the relief of businesses, David Cameron told MPs in the Commons that ICTs “shouldn’t be included” in the proposed cap, but Prof Metcalf said there was “more than one way to skin a cat” and that they should take the “lion’s share” of the cut to non-EU work visas.
The government should raise the minimum threshold for both earnings and qualifications, he said.
May has already indicated the government is looking at such a move, pointing to the £42,000 minimum currently in place in Holland.
Prof Metcalf said: “If you were to have a salary threshold for intra-company transfers of around £40,000 that would, in a sense, fulfil the same objective as our cap.”
He added that businesses would be able to cope with the limits suggested by the MAC.
The MAC report also showed cutting non-EU work visas by around 10,000, leading to a reduction of £559m in the GDP, a change of 0.043%.
It added the GDP per head would be reduced by about £6, or 0.027%, once all the factors were taken into consideration.
The number of non-EU migrant workers on tier-five visas and in permit-free employment, such as working holidaymakers, domestic servants and those who work for airlines at airports, should also be cut by 10%, the MAC said.
But shadow home office minister Gerry Sutcliffe said the cap was “the worst of all worlds”.
“It does very little to control immigration but is bad for business and scientific research at this critical time for our economy,” he said.
Source URL: https://globalrights.info/2010/11/theresa-may-to-announce-migration-cap-plans/