Prime Minister announces new rules on foreign workers
The Prime Minister has, in the last week, given an overview of the new points system for foreign workers. He did, however, receive a rebuke from the Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Grayling.
Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, has promised to “tighten” the UK’s immigration rules by reducing the number of professions that can recruit from outside Europe. The prime minister said net migration was already being cut and that these changes would ensure this continues while maintaining “flexibility”.
Mr Brown defended the government’s points-based system for deciding which migrants from outside the European Economic Area and Switzerland should be accepted. He argued that it had contributed to a 44% fall in inward migration over the past year. The Prime Minister said the importance of “shortage” professions would be looked at in the near future.
The Prime Minister rejected the idea of quota saying:
“We reject the views of those who argue for an inflexible, arbitrary quota or cap on immigration. … To understand the damage a quota system would do to our economy, we should go back to the American system during the early part of this decade. There was an annual quota for skilled IT workers -seven times that quota was exhausted before the end of the year. It is this that has led President Obama to say that he will now reform the difficulties in the system.”
Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Grayling said:
“This is the government that tried to cover up a deliberate policy of increasing immigration and the prime minister’s comments show that he has no idea about how to deal with the whole question of immigration now.”
Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said: “Gordon Brown is attempting to shut the stable door long after the horse has bolted.
“His government’s catastrophic mismanagement of the system has undermined this country’s liberal attitude towards immigration.”
This week the Home Office released a new Draft Immigration Bill for consultation. In addition the Government accepted the Migration Advisory Committee’s recommendations regarding operation of the Points Based System for shortage occupations.
The Prime Minister’s speech can be found at: http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page21298
The Home Office consultation is available at: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/about-us/news/draft-immigration-bill
The revised shortage occupation list can be found at: http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/sitecontent/documents/news/Revised-shortage-occ-list.pdf
Source: APSCo 9th November Newsletter
Tags: Chris Gayling, Gordon Brown, new rules for foreign workers, Shadow Home Secretary, UK Immgiration rule change
