The UK needs to ensure that it does not lose out in the global competition for high skilled migrants
How can we attract skilled migrants to help pull the economy out of recession while not pushing more British workers onto the lengthening dole queues? That is the difficult question that Ministers and advisers are wrestling with at present. A populist position would be to slam the door shut on newcomers and keep all the jobs for ourselves. With an election looming, such a stance must be tempting for Ministers who know that tough talk on immigration often plays better with many voters than smart policies. But having significantly strengthened the control and management of migration in recent years, the government must avoid steps that though electorally popular are economically counter-productive.
Fortunately, the Home Office now has the wise economists of the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) to turn to for advice, and in their latest report they have warned against any substantial tightening of entrance rules – arguing that keeping out migrants with skills that the UK lacks will only delay economic recovery, and that the Points-Based System, through which migrants come to the UK to work, is already designed to reduce flows automatically during recession.
This is sensible advice because our own research shows that there are real dangers in constantly tightening the immigration and citizenship processes with the aim of further reducing inflows. Indeed in a report we published in mid August called
we showed that more focus should be put on emigration of non British nationals. Re-migration, as we call it, has increased in recent years, and migrants are staying for shorter periods. We estimated that around 400 thousand left in 2007 and 2008 – a population equivalent to the cities of Portsmouth and Southampton; and that at least 150,000 migrants will be leaving each year for the next five years.
Meanwhile the number of migrants staying for less than four years doubled in the decade to 2007, while only a quarter of the migrants who arrived in 1998 are still in the UK now. A lot of this is the natural consequence of high levels of immigration in the last decade or so. Contrary to popular opinion, immigrants often see their time in the UK as temporary and have every intention of returning home or going to a third country at some stage. Because immigrants have been arriving in the UK in recent years in record numbers, it is hardly surprising that the numbers re-migrating have also been very high. But that said, it does seem as if so-called ‘circular migration’ and ‘super-mobility’ are growing features of migration patterns. And of particular interest in the context of the skills debate, we also found that the migrants who are most likely to leave the UK are the better educated and more highly skilled – just the ones we most want to keep because our economy needs them.
Last week, the latest figures on migration were published. Most media attention was devoted to the fact that the UK population had topped 61 million for the first time. But what was really interesting was the dramatic increase in emigration. A 44% drop in net migration in 2008 (to 118,000) was largely explained by a more than 50% increase in non-British emigration. The figures showed that this trend was particularly marked for migrants from new EU member states – net migration from these countries was just 14,000 in 2008, down from a peak of over 80,000 in 2007. Of course, in some ways this outflow is a good thing. Our economy in recession has fewer jobs so migrants who can are leaving to look for better opportunities elsewhere. But these figures should also serve as a warning that what goes up can go down – and that the assumption that policy should focus only on stemming inflows may be misplaced. We certainly want to avoid the situation where valuable skilled migrants are put off coming to or staying in the UK because our immigration system is too restrictive.
It is our belief that this is becoming a real danger. Since the publication of our re-migration report I’ve been contacted by a number of skilled migrants telling me that new rules, often applied retrospectively, have hit them so hard that it has made them think whether they want to remain in the UK. Graham and Judy, a New Zealand couple, both teachers, talked of being treated as ‘second class citizens’ because their qualifications were not recognised so they were employed on lower pay grades. This despite the fact that Graham has 20 years experience as a Chemistry teacher and Judy 15 years experience in Special Needs. Mohammed Ali, a qualified accountant, head hunted by a top UK firm, said that new rules required him to re-qualify for his visa under a revised criteria and to prove that he could speak English. As he put it:
“I would have avoided the UK had I known I would be subjected to this nonsense. I have worked and paid top tier taxes from day 1, yet the Home Office has done its best to get me to go back.”
I think the Government needs to be listening to the concerns of people like Mohammed Ali and Graham and Judy – and the many others like them. Recent figures on the Points Based System showed that our IT industry, for instance, is still heavily reliant on skilled Indian graduates, while a recent survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development found that even during recession many employers finding it difficult to recruit the staff they need from the UK-born workforce.
The issue of attracting migrants to fill skills gaps is one that is concerning many economies around the world. Any reform of the US immigration system would almost certainly be designed to orientate it more towards attracting skilled migrants; the new European ‘Blue Card’ means we are in competition with our EU partners (the UK, typically, opted out). And on top of that the new powerhouses, China and India, traditionally countries of emigration, are also going to be sucking in skilled migrants in future years. In these circumstances, we must ensure that our immigration and citizenship rules are not so tight and inflexible that other countries gain a competitive advantage.
