UK imposes new permanent immigration quota

[Andy Nguyen]

LONDON – Britain will impose a tough annual limit on the number of non-Europeans allowed to work in the U.K. and slash visas for overseas students as it seeks to dramatically reduce immigration, the government said Tuesday.

Home Secretary Theresa May told the House of Commons that the number of non-EU nationals permitted to work in the U.K. from April 2011 will be capped at about 22,000 — a reduction of about one-fifth from 2009.

But thousands of people who are allowed to work in Britain on intracompany transfers aren't included in those figures — or under the new quota. Critics said that means it's unclear how Prime Minister David Cameron's government will meet a pledge to cut net immigration, which also includes students and families of visa holders, to below 100,000 by 2015, from about 196,000 last year.

May's quota will have only a limited impact on Britain's overall immigration rate — as work-related visas account only for about 20 percent of migration.

Families of those with rights to live and work in Britain claim about 20 percent of visas, while non-European students arriving to study in the U.K. account for 60 percent of immigration.

May said those seeking a marriage visa will in the future need to prove they have a minimum standard of English.

UK imposes new permanent immigration quota - Yahoo! News
BBC - Democracy Live - May unveils plan to reduce non-EU immigration

 

[Anthony DeAngelis]

This is a real shame. The USA tightened their issuance of visa's and all it does is push educated and hungry people to other countries. The UK is going ever further. Hopefully the USA will capitalize on this and relax their policy some.

What is sad is that Europe desperately needs younger workers to keep their entitlement system going. Just like the USA needs a continual supply of workers to support the Social Security program.

 

[atreides]

This is a real shame. The USA tightened their issuance of visa's and all it does is push educated and hungry people to other countries. The UK is going ever further. Hopefully the USA will capitalize on this and relax their policy some.

Closing the flood gates slowing will probably cause some "educated and hungry" people short term pain, but these individuals would eventually settle somewhere else.

Call me a cynic, but I think when it comes to US immigration policies, politicians only act if said legislation benefits them in some shape or form. Case in point the DREAM Act. Most people favor and actually think it's a good idea but yet, it has been wallowing in the corridors of Congress for almost a decade.

The Democrats will probably try and pass it soon to appease the growing Hispanic base and ride the wave into another election cycle.

What is sad is that Europe desperately needs younger workers to keep their entitlement system going. Just like the USA needs a continual supply of workers to support the Social Security program.

 

[DominiConnor]

atreides is right that the migrants will end up somewhere.

The question is who does this benefit.

The vast majority of migration is economic, people want to work. On average these people are significantly more economically useful than both the population they leave and the one they join.

So if the USA, Britain, or any other country that has allowed this policy area to be captured by racist arts graduates stops them from entering, the rejected workers won't just go and live in a mud hut, scraping a living by begging on the streets, but since they are better educated, and with more "get up and go" they will become entrepreneurs, useful skilled workers etc for outfits that are competing with workers in high wage cost countries.

You stop an electronic engineer or programmer working for HP in the USA or Britain, and he might well work in India for 1/3 the money.
Same work, less money for him, less money for the high wage cost country.
Regardless of whether you see yourself as left or right wing, hard to see that as in your interest, unless of course you are living in India or China, etc each of which ho benefits as a nation from such stupidity.

Of course he might work for an firm native to that country. So even the bit of money HP gets from using his work is lost, and US / UK firms are competing even more against smart, cheap people in firms where they can't even poach their staff.
So the HWC economy loses the value of their work, and the tax revenue of the government is reduced, since the lower pay of the workers is taxed by where he lives.
His earnings will mostly be spent on goods and services produced locally, because even in an age of globalisation most of what people spend is on things produce near them. (somewhere to live, healthcare, food, entertainment). That economic activity is lost to the economy that rejected them.

To be a migrant worker you have to be the sort of person who can migrate. By that I mean sick people, and those with serious defects that stop them working, or those who are too lazy to bother moving don't migrate. That filter improve the set quite dramatically.
That means their maintenance costs are lower, and their productivity higher.

Note that in no part of my response have I talked about the "rights" of migrants or implied any duty to anyone to be nice to them. Cold self interest says to let them in, let them work and contribute.

 

[Katrina]

Hopefully the USA will capitalize on this and relax their policy some.

I think the USA has enough migrants already and really isnt in a situation to accept any more migrants. With unemployment at close to 10 percent in the USA and about 7.5 percent in UK - the politicians are convinced they dont need to bring any more people to do any more work for the country.

I think the only thing that will change their attitudes are low unemployment which is going to take some time.

 

[Anthony DeAngelis]

Hopefully the USA will capitalize on this and relax their policy some.

I think the USA has enough migrants already and really isnt in a situation to accept any more migrants. With unemployment at close to 10 percent in the USA and about 7.5 percent in UK - the politicians are convinced they dont need to bring any more people to do any more work for the country.

I think the only thing that will change their attitudes are low unemployment which is going to take some time.

If you break down the unemployment numbers you will see a high figure for high school graduates and a modest figure for college graduates. The economy is continuing to shift towards a more skilled economy, IMO.

I think there are still plenty of positions for skilled workers. Either way, if someone didn't get a job because of the economy that's one thing, but not giving people jobs because of H1 quotas or rules is not the direction I think this country should be going in.

 

[Katrina]

Anthony and the rest of all who are posting to this blog. I would definitely vote for you if you decide to run for political office in future after i become a citizen.

Just dont change your opinions when you take office

 

[AlgoCan]

Unfortunately migrants are easy political targets: I am not sure if there has been any reliable measurement of (positive or negative) contributions that migrants have had to any given country, but nevertheless in tough economic times they become scapegoats. This is not just limited to US or UK, but if you have noticed recently (i.e., after financial markets crash of 2007) all over the world there has been a "mood" change, if you wish, towards migrants...in Sweden, a typically relaxed and liberal country, right-wing nationalist have secured more parliament seats, German chancellor announced "utter failure" of multicultural society and many similar examples. I wonder whether the "problem" of migrants did not exist in prosperous times?

 

[Anthony DeAngelis]

Anthony and the rest of all who are posting to this blog. I would definitely vote for you if you decide to run for political office in future after i become a citizen.

Just dont change your opinions when you take office

Haha listen to some of my other opinions before you make that statement lol.

 

[bigbadwolf]

... in Sweden, a typically relaxed and liberal country, right-wing nationalist have secured more parliament seats, German chancellor announced "utter failure" of multicultural society and many similar examples. I wonder whether the "problem" of migrants did not exist in prosperous times?

In Europe immigration has always been considered a problem. In Germany the Turkish workers came as gastarbeiter (guest workers) who, it was tacitly assumed, would eventually return to their country of origin. Europe is crowded compared to the USA, and it has both more well-defined national cultures and sense of ethnicity. Immigrants are destined to remain outsiders. Just look at the gypsies (Roma), who have been in Europe for a thousand years after migrating from India -- they are still treated as outsiders, untermensch, throughout Europe. There has always been a xenophobic strand in Europe, particularly Northern and Western Europe. In this sense the Nazis were no anomaly. This strand comes to the fore in difficult economic times. But it is always lurking there beneath the surface.

The USA, in contrast, defines itself as a young nation, a nation of immigrants, a melting pot. There is more ambivalence towards new migrants simply because the grandparents or great-grandparents of so many Americans were themselves immigrants. In addition, national culture and ethnic bonds do not have the same stranglehold on the country. In this sense the USA is an accepting country, and easy to assimilate into -- partly perhaps because there is not so much to assimilate into in the first place. The flip side of the same coin is that because ethnic and concomitant cultural bonds are weak, there isn't much of a social contract in the US. Life is more volatile and insecure. The Nordic social welfare states were built on a foundation of ethnic homogeneity -- a sine qua non, since in the final analysis social welfare states depend on the trust that extended kinship provides. For this reason the USA can never be the kind of social welfare state Norway and Sweden have been.

 

[AlgoCan]

In Europe immigration has always been considered a problem. In Germany the Turkish workers came as gastarbeiter (guest workers) who, it was tacitly assumed, would eventually return to their country of origin. Europe is crowded compared to the USA, and it has both more well-defined national cultures and sense of ethnicity. Immigrants are destined to remain outsiders. Just look at the gypsies (Roma), who have been in Europe for a thousand years after migrating from India -- they are still treated as outsiders, untermensch, throughout Europe. There has always been a xenophobic strand in Europe, particularly Northern and Western Europe. In this sense the Nazis were no anomaly. This strand comes to the fore in difficult economic times. But it is always lurking there beneath the surface.

The USA, in contrast, defines itself as a young nation, a nation of immigrants, a melting pot. There is more ambivalence towards new migrants simply because the grandparents or great-grandparents of so many Americans were themselves immigrants. In addition, national culture and ethnic bonds do not have the same stranglehold on the country. In this sense the USA is an accepting country, and easy to assimilate into -- partly perhaps because there is not so much to assimilate into in the first place. The flip side of the same coin is that because ethnic and concomitant cultural bonds are weak, there isn't much of a social contract in the US. Life is more volatile and insecure. The Nordic social welfare states were built on a foundation of ethnic homogeneity -- a sine qua non, since in the final analysis social welfare states depend on the trust that extended kinship provides. For this reason the USA can never be the kind of social welfare state Norway and Sweden have been.

I agree with your comments regarding the role of "culture" in day-to-day life of immigrants in Europe vs US. My argument here is that decisions regarding worker immigration is not based on rational economic analysis but rather on opportunistic political motivations...

 

[DominiConnor]

@BBW: Immigrants are destined to remain outsiders.

Although this does happen, the diffusion in most European countries is actually more rapid than right wing racists would have you believe, and faster than left wing pseudo-liberals would like.

My own parents were immigrants, and on a number of occasions I've been accused of being "establishment", ie old traditional English.

If we compare London to NY, we see areas in both where people of given background cluster, shops and restaurants that cater to those markets, but within a generation they start to decay unless the pool is topped up.

An elegant example is the Brick Lane area of London, right next to the City financial district.
This area has the best collection of Indian restaurants in the world, you can find four in a row next to each other, and is surrounded by a large number of people from South Asia.
But already they are hitting issues because they can't import enough staff for the restaurants because the younger people often walk an extra few hundred metres into banks, and/or move away, indeed the established business life cycle is to start in Banglatown then set up somewhere the competition is less intense, hence within 500 metres of my house there are two really good restaurants. There is even a joke on this. Two white Brits have spent time travelling abroad, and hunger for the sort of food they are used to, tiring of strange tastes and unknowable contents of dishes. They see an Indian restaurant and demand they are taken there to be feed English food (like Tikka Massala, Onion Bhajis and Cobra lager)

Germany is of course different, and we never did bomb Austria enough to make them into civilised human beings. But even there, you will hear parents lament on how their kids have gone native.

The Gastarbeiter issue is a continued source of friction between England and Germany, since British citizenship is based upon birth, residence and being "someone we want", and Germany bases it upon your skin colour. It's an issue because a coloured person with a UK passport is legally allowed to work anywhere in the EU. That's not to say a German company will hire them, but at least it's legal.

Note I said "England" there...
If you were to make it a separate country, it would not only be fighting it out for densest population in Europe, it would be near the top for any country anywhere.

We're going through a phase when many people are pretending that Scotland is a viable political entity, and there the problem is the high % of people who leave at the first chance they get, and since life expectancy in some parts of Scotland is lower than Iraq their 'government' want pretty much any flavour of immigrant they can get. There is talk of changing the visa system so that if you promise to live in Scotland, you can come to Britain. The issue seems not to be the standard racism problems, but how you enforce it between two regions that have not had effective borders since the fall of the Roman Empire.

Even though England is highly dense, and London still more, there really haven't been the large scale issues that much smaller cities like Paris have had, or across Germany where the population is a more evenly spread.

Britain gets vastly more non-white immigrants than Europe, and the flow of white immigration within Europe has mostly been towards Britain. London is now often referred to as "France's 5th City", because it's frankly insane labour laws have driven hundreds of thousands of smart young French people into Britain. They even have election rallies in the City now.

So the issue never has been "space", that's just a way left wing racists can make themselves feel comfortable with supporting racist immigration policies.

My view is that this is due to what I sometimes think of as the only uniquely English virtue, that of "not giving a ****". In their hearts, most English people really don't care all that much about race, etc. Yes they will tell racist jokes, sometimes hire the white guy over the slightly better qualified non-white, and make monkey noises when a black footballer gets the ball. But there's no real passion in their racism, it's a sort of habit.