UK employers condemn "ignorant, elitist" Brexit immigration report
7 replies, posted
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/sep/18/brexit-eu-citizens-special-access-migration-advisory-committee
Business leaders have lined up to criticise the government’s migration advisory committee (MAC) after it proposed an “ignorant and elitist” ban on foreign workers earning less than
£30,000 a year from obtaining visas to work in the UK after Brexit.
Organisations representing hauliers, housebuilders and the hospitality sector were among those to sound the alarm after the committee said only “higher skilled” workers should be
allowed visas, with no preferential access given to European Union citizens.
Its report said that the existing tier 2 skilled workers scheme, which currently applies to people outside the European Economic Area (EEA) for skilled jobs earning more than £30,000 a
year, could provide a template for a future migration scheme post-Brexit as long as the cap on employing 20,700 people a year was removed.
The committee made clear that ministers could develop an alternative immigration policy with the EU, which would be linked to a trade package as part of the exit negotiations. The
committee added that did “not express a view on whether immigration should be part of the EU negotiations”. The CBI said it was not a roadmap for a new system for that reason, and
said Britain should link an open immigration policy to the trade deals it is able to strike after Brexit.
Matthew Fell, the CBI’s policy director, said: “If it is the government’s intention to implement a global system, preferential access for countries where the UK has trade deals will be
essential to provide the basis for an open and controlled system that can work for the UK’s economy.”
The MAC was set up to advise on the UK’s migration policy after Brexit, with a new regime expected to start when the transition period ends in 2021. It is designed to inform a white
paper that has repeatedly been delayed but is due this autumn.
The scale of the pushback will strengthen the hand of the chancellor, Philip Hammond, and the business secretary, Greg Clark, both of whom want to soften the impact of Brexit with a
less restrictive immigration policy, although they have to contend with cabinet opposition from Sajid Javid at the Home Office and wider pressure from the hard Brexit wing of the
Conservative party.
There was even alarm raised among some professional sectors over the MAC proposal that the UK should consider adopting a migration policy along the lines of Canada, which
Manning said had “an open, welcoming approach to migration but no free movement agreement with any other country”.
EU citizens have, until now, been able to enter the UK freely, seeking work on arrival. Concerns about the impact of free movement is considered to be one of the central reasons why
the country voted for Brexit, with the annual 100,000 target for net migration exceeded every year since it was introduced by David Cameron.
Stephen Clarke, a senior economic analyst at the Resolution Foundation, said: “If enacted, these proposals would effectively end low-skilled migration, while prioritising mid and high-
skill migration in areas where we have labour shortages. This would represent a huge shift for low-paying sectors like food manufacturing, hotels and domestic personnel, where over
one in five workers are migrants.”
it looks more and more like brexit was just an excuse to enact american styled conservatism instead of address long standing grievances
The "Stop brown people! Close borders!" rhetoric told us everything we needed to know on that head.
https://puu.sh/Bxtn5.png
Not even the amount of seasalt that exists in the Pacific and Atlantic can compete to how salty that Kiwi is.
Brexit will fail, on all fronts,
it will either make them walk back to the EU with a tail between their legs,
or just separate and quite possibly break up the UK, weaken them on the stage of global trade and make them so economically weak they never gonna recover.
And but twenty years after the UK finally got the Irish situation sorted out with the Good Friday Agreement, shame.
Haven't we established that he isn't really so much a salty supporter of Brexit as much as he's just kind of super shortsighted and wants it to happen because if the UK leaves the EU they might trade more with New Zealand more?
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