Thread: Because 35k p.a. is chicken feed obviously Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.
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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on
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Normally I don't bother railing against the petty, stupid, vindictive, discriminatory, blinkered, tabloid-placating follies of the present government, being as they are so many and so vile that there would be little time for anything else.
But this takes the biscuit:
'In April (2016) the Home Office and Theresa May are introducing a pay threshold for people to remain here, after already working here for 5 years. This only affects non-EU citizens that earn under £35,000 a year, which unfairly discriminates against charity workers, nurses, students and others.
This ridiculous measure is only going to affect 40,000 people who have already been living and working in the UK for 5 years, contributing to our culture and economy. It will drive more workers from the NHS and people from their families. This empty gesture will barely affect the immigration statistics. It's a waste of time, money and lives.
This is the first time the UK has discriminated against low-earners. £35k is an unreasonably high threshold. The UK will lose thousands of skilled workers.'
You will find the link to the petition in my signature.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
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This doesn't affect me since I'm from an EU country, but I currently work in the UK and I earn less than 35k.
[ 18. January 2016, 12:22: Message edited by: LeRoc ]
Posted by Spike (# 36) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
It will drive more workers from the NHS and people from their families. This empty gesture will barely affect the immigration statistics. It's a waste of time, money and lives.
It's not an empty gesture unfortunately. It makes perfect sense to me. This government is hell bent on destroying the NHS and this is just another nail in the coffin.
Posted by The Phantom Flan Flinger (# 8891) on
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I don't know what you're complaining about.
No sensible, compassionate government would bring in such a policy without making sure any negative effects were mitigated.
It seems obvious that the minimum wage will be raised to £35k - good news for everyone.
Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on
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quote:
Originally posted by The Phantom Flan Flinger:
I don't know what you're complaining about.
No sensible, compassionate government would bring in such a policy without making sure any negative effects were mitigated.
It seems obvious that the minimum wage will be raised to £35k - good news for everyone.
That's what people are supposed to think. While government policy is driven by a combination of corporate interests and cheap shots by the press drumming up jingoistic fear, democracy doesn't get a look in.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
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I wish the PM would send me somewhere warm. I've never earned anything like £36k. How about if I pretend I don't speak English, David?
Posted by BroJames (# 9636) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
quote:
Originally posted by The Phantom Flan Flinger:
I don't know what you're complaining about.
No sensible, compassionate government would bring in such a policy without making sure any negative effects were mitigated.
It seems obvious that the minimum wage will be raised to £35k - good news for everyone.
That's what people are supposed to think. While government policy is driven by a combination of corporate interests and cheap shots by the press drumming up jingoistic fear, democracy doesn't get a look in.
Hmm! Either my irony meter is on the blink, or yours is.
Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on
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While I think this is another piece of vile policy, it would be worth discussing if the wages for nurses, council employees etc were set at this level as a minimum (it doesn't need to be a full minimum wage, just in those areas that the government has more control over).
As it is, this just says to those working as hard as fuck but not getting properly remunerated that they are not wanted.
It will actually make very little difference to the statistics. But it will make a big difference to a number of people. Another case of this governments arrogance and disregard of other people. And PATHETIC focus on money over all else.
Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on
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quote:
Originally posted by BroJames:
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
quote:
Originally posted by The Phantom Flan Flinger:
I don't know what you're complaining about.
No sensible, compassionate government would bring in such a policy without making sure any negative effects were mitigated.
It seems obvious that the minimum wage will be raised to £35k - good news for everyone.
That's what people are supposed to think. While government policy is driven by a combination of corporate interests and cheap shots by the press drumming up jingoistic fear, democracy doesn't get a look in.
Hmm! Either my irony meter is on the blink, or yours is.
Mine I expect. Years of working for the government has taught to read the words and only the words. Any attempt to extract meaning from them is doomed.
Posted by Doublethink. (# 1984) on
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quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
This doesn't affect me since I'm from an EU country,
Yet.
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on
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I suppose a cold, rational, uncaring government might look at an immigrant who has been here for 5years and never worked but survived on the generousity of the public purse (whether through state welfare or the support of others in the community) as being a drain on the economy and therefore unwelcome.
But, in what sort of universe does that logic extend to people who work hard, earn money, pay taxes, buy goods and services, create economic growth that increases job opportunites for all, and generally contribute to society? It makes no sense at all. How to improve public finances, get rid of a load of tax payers! Bonkers, totally bonkers.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink.:
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
This doesn't affect me since I'm from an EU country,
Yet.
Good one.
Posted by Anglican't (# 15292) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink.:
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
This doesn't affect me since I'm from an EU country,
Yet.
A perverse consequence of this policy - to my mind, anyway - is that it would favour, say, an EU citizen from the Balkans over a Commonwealth citizen from, say, Canada or Australia who would have a much greater cultural affinity with Britain. Though I don't know whether the government would have the power at the moment to remedy this.
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on
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I'm all for cutting immigration, but I'd start with the richer immigrants. At least poor migrants come here to work, rather than to dodge taxes at home or launder their money by driving our property prices up.
That said, we do also need to get ourselves out of this mindset that we can just get our workers from elsewhere, without having to pay to train them or anything like that. When we had an empire, we started by taking raw materials from poorer countries, and then used those countries as protected markets for our own exports. Now we take labour from poorer countries. It's the same economically imperialist mindset and it's profoundly unhealthy. Time we started living on our own resources.
Posted by JonahMan (# 12126) on
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Michael Rosen has an excellent response to the "teach Muslims English so they don't go and join ISIS" nonsense:
Michael Rosen
Posted by Huia (# 3473) on
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Hmm, Junior Doctors, nurses - NZ may improve its public health services at last.
Huia - ducks and runs
Posted by The Phantom Flan Flinger (# 8891) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
A perverse consequence of this policy - to my mind, anyway - is that it would favour, say, an EU citizen from the Balkans over a Commonwealth citizen from, say, Canada or Australia who would have a much greater cultural affinity with Britain. Though I don't know whether the government would have the power at the moment to remedy this.
They could remedy it by not bringing in such an idiotic policy in the first place.
Posted by Firenze (# 619) on
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One suspects they thought 'non-EU - that'll be places like Syria and Somalia so just brown and black folk then' rather than places like the USA, Canada, Australia etc whose expats might actually be white. Ah, but if we throw in the 35k, it'll just be poor white people, and since we don't care about the ones that live here ordinarily...
Posted by alienfromzog (# 5327) on
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Government by tabloid headline.
![[Help]](graemlins/help.gif)
![[Disappointed]](graemlins/disappointed.gif)
![[Waterworks]](graemlins/bawling.gif)
![[Mad]](angryfire.gif)
AFZ
Posted by The Phantom Flan Flinger (# 8891) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
quote:
Originally posted by BroJames:
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
quote:
Originally posted by The Phantom Flan Flinger:
I don't know what you're complaining about.
No sensible, compassionate government would bring in such a policy without making sure any negative effects were mitigated.
It seems obvious that the minimum wage will be raised to £35k - good news for everyone.
That's what people are supposed to think. While government policy is driven by a combination of corporate interests and cheap shots by the press drumming up jingoistic fear, democracy doesn't get a look in.
Hmm! Either my irony meter is on the blink, or yours is.
Mine I expect. Years of working for the government has taught to read the words and only the words. Any attempt to extract meaning from them is doomed.
Funny, years of working for the government has taught me to always look for the hidden meaning.
Posted by Paul. (# 37) on
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It gets worse! May wants to charge companies for employing skilled migrants
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on
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Hooray! More jobs will be available to British workers, which will surely result in falling unemployment and a reduction in poverty!
Oh wait, you're saying this is a bad thing?
Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on
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It's probably a desperate plan to get more cash into the Treasury, but if this levy will primarily affect nurses, doctors, teachers and IT specialists then a lot of it will be paid by the public sector to HMT, which is "funny money" in the first place, and the net effect will be a reduction in the payments made by the Treasury to the NHS, Dept for Education and government departments administering IT projects.
Dumb or what?
Posted by Ariel (# 58) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Hooray! More jobs will be available to British workers, which will surely result in falling unemployment and a reduction in poverty!
Oh wait, you're saying this is a bad thing?
Jobs have been available for British workers to apply to for years. It's just that many don't want to take them because of low pay and long hours, e.g. strawberry picking, care agencies, nursing, etc.
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on
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But actually they bloody well should take them if they have no other means of supporting themselves. And they should then get themselves unionised to makw their pay and conditions better. Importing migrant labour allows neoliberal capitalists (in government and the private sector) to keep these jobs poorly paid and precarious. We shouldn't be objecting to migrant workers themselves: we should be objecting to the system that brings them here (and of which they are often victims).
Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on
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If anybody wants to work in Aberdeenshire as a care worker, there are dozens of jobs. Care homes are desperate for staff. We will have a care crisis here if migrant workers can't come and British people aren't willing to move into the area.
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Hooray! More jobs will be available to British workers, which will surely result in falling unemployment and a reduction in poverty!
You do realise that 'being employed' and 'in poverty' are not mutually exclusive states, right?
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
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British shops will be able to sell less stuff to people.
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
Jobs have been available for British workers to apply to for years. It's just that many don't want to take them because of low pay and long hours, e.g. strawberry picking, care agencies, nursing, etc.
If low pay is the problem then I guess the employers will have to start paying an amount British people will accept rather than undercutting them by hiring immigrants.
If long hours is the problem regardless of the amount if pay on offer then that's just British people being workshy, and we'll have to find some other way to motivate them to do it...
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Hooray! More jobs will be available to British workers, which will surely result in falling unemployment and a reduction in poverty!
You do realise that 'being employed' and 'in poverty' are not mutually exclusive states, right?
We're talking about jobs that pay up to £35,000 per year. While I accept that that will include some jobs that are poorly paid, most of them will be well above the poverty line.
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on
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quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
If anybody wants to work in Aberdeenshire as a care worker, there are dozens of jobs. Care homes are desperate for staff. We will have a care crisis here if migrant workers can't come and British people aren't willing to move into the area.
Does Aberdeenshire have 100% employment? If not, what's wrong with all the unemployed locals that means they're not willing to take the jobs that are available to them?
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
If low pay is the problem then I guess the employers will have to start paying an amount British people will accept rather than undercutting them by hiring immigrants.
This is bullshit. Our standard of living is based on cheap labour - if you want to have a high standard of living which everyone can afford, you have to get cheap labour from somewhere.
If you increase the labour costs, that will make it unaffordable and uncompetitive - for example care of senior citizens would become something nobody could afford, leading to an increase in other people having to stop work and so on.
In the past, this cheap labour came from the working and underclass in this country who were prepared to live short, shitty lives based on hard manual labour whilst the middle-classes moaned about their immorality from their sofas.
More recently the gap has been filled with waves of immigration, with the promise of hard work leading to a better tomorrow for themselves and their children.
Most recently the gap has been filled with temporary Eastern European workers, prepared to work for low pay for a few years, after which many return to live a better life in their country of origin from their savings.
Hardly a great solution, I agree, but castigating those who are working hardest to keep the country afloat is just ![[Projectile]](graemlins/puke2.gif)
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on
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So... you think it's a good thing that so many British employers can exploit immigrant workers by paying them far less than they would have to pay a British worker?
Fair enough.
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Hooray! More jobs will be available to British workers, which will surely result in falling unemployment and a reduction in poverty!
What will happen is that we'll pack off the one set of workers just as they're getting their feet on the pay ladder, and send for another set of workers who will have to start from the beginning again.
I suspect the reason we can't find enough British people to do the work is that we don't invest enough money in training them. Instead we get other countries to train them for us. No matter how eager someone is to find work, you don't want them looking after you after an operation if they don't know the difference between an intravenous drip and a catheter.
The unemployment rate is largely made up not of people who permanently can't find work, but of people who can only find intermittent temporary jobs.
Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
If anybody wants to work in Aberdeenshire as a care worker, there are dozens of jobs. Care homes are desperate for staff. We will have a care crisis here if migrant workers can't come and British people aren't willing to move into the area.
Does Aberdeenshire have 100% employment? If not, what's wrong with all the unemployed locals that means they're not willing to take the jobs that are available to them?
Have you ever heard of zero hours contracts? Lack of convenient transport? being tied to home by care responsibilities of ones own? Being physically unable to do a number of jobs while capable of doing many others.
Your continued ignorance shouldn't surprise me by now, but it does.
Posted by The Phantom Flan Flinger (# 8891) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
If long hours is the problem regardless of the amount if pay on offer then that's just British people being workshy, and we'll have to find some other way to motivate them to do it...
Like motivating employers to not expect long hours, so that people can have a decent work/life balance.
Or should people have to work long hours for a pittance, and have no quality of life whatsoever?
Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Hooray! More jobs will be available to British workers, which will surely result in falling unemployment and a reduction in poverty!
Oh wait, you're saying this is a bad thing?
Dear The Times, today I saw the first Lump Labour Fallacy of spring.
Ricardus
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on
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quote:
Originally posted by The Phantom Flan Flinger:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
If long hours is the problem regardless of the amount if pay on offer then that's just British people being workshy, and we'll have to find some other way to motivate them to do it...
Like motivating employers to not expect long hours, so that people can have a decent work/life balance.
Or should people have to work long hours for a pittance, and have no quality of life whatsoever?
Better pay would mean people could work fewer hours means the work there is could be shared among more people. Sounds good to me.
Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
Jobs have been available for British workers to apply to for years. It's just that many don't want to take them because of low pay and long hours, e.g. strawberry picking, care agencies, nursing, etc.
If low pay is the problem then I guess the employers will have to start paying an amount British people will accept rather than undercutting them by hiring immigrants.
If long hours is the problem regardless of the amount if pay on offer then that's just British people being workshy, and we'll have to find some other way to motivate them to do it...
High pay and bonuses seem to be essential to keep city traders and bankers here. How about trying that for the rest?
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Does Aberdeenshire have 100% employment? If not, what's wrong with all the unemployed locals that means they're not willing to take the jobs that are available to them?
Have you ever heard of zero hours contracts? Lack of convenient transport? being tied to home by care responsibilities of ones own? Being physically unable to do a number of jobs while capable of doing many others.
I've heard of all of those things. Are you suggesting that every single unemployed person in Aberdeenshire is affected by at least one of them?
I note in passing that Aberdeenshire actually does have one of the lowest unemployment rates in Scotland, so that could be closer to the truth than one would normally assume.
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
If low pay is the problem then I guess the employers will have to start paying an amount British people will accept rather than undercutting them by hiring immigrants.
If long hours is the problem regardless of the amount if pay on offer then that's just British people being workshy, and we'll have to find some other way to motivate them to do it...
High pay and bonuses seem to be essential to keep city traders and bankers here. How about trying that for the rest?
You mean like I said in the first paragraph of the post you quoted?
Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
If low pay is the problem then I guess the employers will have to start paying an amount British people will accept rather than undercutting them by hiring immigrants.
If long hours is the problem regardless of the amount if pay on offer then that's just British people being workshy, and we'll have to find some other way to motivate them to do it...
High pay and bonuses seem to be essential to keep city traders and bankers here. How about trying that for the rest?
You mean like I said in the first paragraph of the post you quoted?
Even you are probably aware that city traders and bankers are of the same kind as those who run and own the country. Others need the kind of economic muscle that trade unions used to provide but the "Radical Conservatives" destroyed them. rest of uis need
Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
If anybody wants to work in Aberdeenshire as a care worker, there are dozens of jobs. Care homes are desperate for staff. We will have a care crisis here if migrant workers can't come and British people aren't willing to move into the area.
Does Aberdeenshire have 100% employment? If not, what's wrong with all the unemployed locals that means they're not willing to take the jobs that are available to them?
Prior to the recent fall in oil prices, Aberdeen had a person: job ration of 1:1.2 i.e. there were more jobs than people. The unemployment rate was 2.2%, and not all of those 2.2% would be able to take shift work if they had e.g. dependent children.
There have been lay-offs in the oil industry, but men who have been laid off from the oil rigs are unlikely to have the qualifications needed for a care worker.
Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on
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Missed edit window.
quote:
If not, what's wrong with all the unemployed locals that means they're not willing to take the jobs that are available to them?
The problem arises with people whom employers are unwilling to employ - poor references, criminal record, etc etc.
Or they have e.g. caring responsibilities which restricts what they can do, or they can't access jobs because of transport issues.
[ 19. January 2016, 19:55: Message edited by: North East Quine ]
Posted by Doublethink. (# 1984) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
If anybody wants to work in Aberdeenshire as a care worker, there are dozens of jobs. Care homes are desperate for staff. We will have a care crisis here if migrant workers can't come and British people aren't willing to move into the area.
Does Aberdeenshire have 100% employment? If not, what's wrong with all the unemployed locals that means they're not willing to take the jobs that are available to them?
Most professions paying £35,000 are graduate professions. Many people do not have, and may not have the capacity to obtain, degree level qualifications.
Meanwhile, care work requires you to pass a CRB check, so ex-offenders are not going to be able to work in that field. E.g. If you have a conviction for ABH you are not going to get work with vulnerable people.
Plus people some people simply lack the organisational skills.
[ 19. January 2016, 21:11: Message edited by: Doublethink. ]
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
So... you think it's a good thing that so many British employers can exploit immigrant workers by paying them far less than they would have to pay a British worker?
No, I think the proposal punishes the exploited worker rather than the exploiting employer.
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on
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quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
Missed edit window.
quote:
If not, what's wrong with all the unemployed locals that means they're not willing to take the jobs that are available to them?
The problem arises with people whom employers are unwilling to employ - poor references, criminal record, etc etc.
Or they have e.g. caring responsibilities which restricts what they can do, or they can't access jobs because of transport issues.
Yes. It's easy to say "why not take this job?" but quite often the problem is not being offered the job even though it exists. Doesn't matter how willing you are to work if for whatever reasons you don't get the job offers.
It's like people say to me, if I don't like my job, why don't I get another one? Well, that's exactly what I've being trying to do for over a year, but you can't force employers to take you on.
Posted by the famous rachel (# 1258) on
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Leaving strawberry pickers etc aside for now, since this proposal relates to skilled migrants, I just want to point out the hoops you already have to jump through to recruit these people:
At least under the rules my employer sticks to, to issue a Tier 2 Certificate of Sponsorship so that a skilled migrant from outside the EU can get a visa, you have to be able to show that the post has been advertised widely and that nobody from the EU with the appropriate skills has applied. For me, employing highly-specialized scientific researchers to work in an academic context that is often the case. For some of the jobs we advertise they may be only a handful of qualified individuals in the world. I can't just magic up highly-trained British people out of thin air!
Under the new rules, it seems that if I recruit a highly skilled scientist straight out of their PhD from overseas, and they work for me for 5 years, developing their skillset further and becoming a valuable member of my research team, they will then have to leave the country, as their salary after 5 years will "only" be about £32,000. That could easily mean losing the only person in the world with their specific skillset to a competitor group overseas. Since much of my research is linked to industry and some of my researchers work directly with UK industry, providing information which can increase productivity and profits, UK industry will take a direct hit as well as UK innovation. [sarcasm] But at least we'll have cut migrant numbers by one, so that's OK [/sarcasm].
Actually, in the above scenario, I would probably use some fancy footwork to get the person in question bumped up the payscale so they were above the threshold. However, given fixed project budgets, that will leave me with less money to pay other researchers, so it will still negatively impact my research and might limit (for example) the duration of contact I could offer to someone from the UK coming out of the PhD programme to be trained in another post.
All of this is sadly quite likely, even though it only arises when I essentially had to employ the overseas person as I had no other options of employing qualified EU people. If the regulations were enforced, I would HAVE TO take a nominally equally qualified EU person over an overseas person, even if I considered them significantly less able based on their CV, performance at interview etc.
The unintended consequences of these immigration policies in my line of work have already been huge and are set to get worse. There is a lot of cost just in dealing with all this crap, and for the NHS it must be a huge burden on time and resources... all to try and keep out skilled people who we need anyway.
Best wishes,
Rachel.
Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on
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We actually have some interesting challenges in my current work. I should point out that most of the teams I have worked in over the last decade plus have been multi-national, and often included someone from outside the EU. This is the nature of IT development teams today.
We are currently trying to recruit. We have not been inundated with applications, because we are near London, and most people will go to London and earn more. So we are struggling to get people. We have recently made offers to two people, both non-UK nationals (and one from outside the EU). The truth is, we just don't get the quantity and quality of applications to be picky. As it is, we are paying at a higher rate for this role, but we have been looking for a less well qualified person too.
So we have few options. We could make sure that everyone we take on is paid more than 35K. If a lot of places do this, we would have rampant inflation, which is not a good thing. We could take on UK nationals, except that they don't apply (well, they do, but it is a meaningless restriction to put on our struggling recruitment). Or we could just do less work, bringing productivity down, which is probably what will happen (and is happening).
Longer term, it may mean that we restructure to have more senior people and less juniors. So if we - and presumably others - don't want to fill vacancies for inexperienced roles, for graduates, for 25-30YOs looking for a slightly more senior job, then what effect with that have on UK employment?
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on
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There are large parts of the UK employment sector where the entry qualification requirement (which may be academic, previous work experience or a combination of both) restricts the pool of potential employees. Very few of those employment opportunities will have a £25k+ starting salary, allowing for a £35k+ salary after 5 years. And, probably no small number of them would also be suitable for non-EU workers who are already employed in the UK - for whom the window of employment is going to be less than 5y. It isn't even necessarily just those jobs with very narrow academic abilities (such as the aforementioned research and IT sectors); imagine the owner of a restaurant in Edinburgh seeking a new bar manager, with several Australian staff who have spent the last 4 years working behind the bar there and would be ideal candidates to manage the bar - should he then promote one of the staff he knows are competant, but find them "sent home" after a year and need to go through the process again, or employ an EU citizen who hasn't worked for him?
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on
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Though, other new proposals would mean that offers of employment to non-EU workers would need to meet a minimum salary threshold of £30k, and charge the employer £1000 per year. This bizarre xenophobia to limit immigration seems set to further hinder UK business and society.
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on
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Anyone would think that they hadn't actually thought it through...
Posted by Macrina (# 8807) on
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This all just seems so completely bizarre to me.
I am someone who has gone the other way, a Skilled Migrant to New Zealand from the UK. Even with the cost of living being very much higher here than the UK I was required only to have a job paying $55000 a year (about £25000) which is about the average salary when pulled up by the higher earners.
I cannot express in words how devastated I would feel if I were to be forced to leave what is now my life of the past three years - a life in which I pay NZ taxes and work in their health system to try and make a real difference and have made my home here. I very much hope that the people of the UK protest this in the strongest of terms.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
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Of course it hinders business. Smaller labour pool to choose from, less customers …
Posted by Firenze (# 619) on
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The petition is now approaching 76,000 signatures. The story was picked up by The Independent a couple of days ago, but it needs more exposure. Ding the pulpit in blads.
Posted by Ariston (# 10894) on
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So I'm thinking of what this law would mean in practice for, say, me, back when I was working in publishing. Now, granted, I was in academic publishing, and the not-for-profit/university press humanities-centered part that's not exactly something you go into just for the pay—but I'm doubting that I'd have made the equivalent of £35k/yr as a junior acquisitions/commissioning editor, either here in the States or in Britain. That's just not what you pay us, period.
Yet it's not unusual for midsize-to-large academic publishers to have one branch in the States, another in Britain, and to transfer staff back and forth as needed. While this is admittedly only one industry, I'm pretty sure there are other examples of others that have a pretty active presence on both sides of the Atlantic Anglosphere; are only highly-paid executives to be sent to assignments in Britain now?
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on
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The government has now responded to the petition. Which, if I read it right, means that this is a measure that will have virtually no effect on immigration, but looks good to the xenophobes within the Tory party (and, parties such as UKIP who the Tories want to entice back to vote for them). Applies only to graduate level jobs, so won't affect the immigrant agricultural workers etc. It also has exemptions for PhD level workers, and for any defined "shortage occupations" (including nurses and health care workers). There are also options for an extension beyond 5 years, or for transfer to different tiers.
However, the remaining affected people are the highly skilled employees in UK businesses. So, to make a "modest" cut in migrant numbers the government plan to further impede UK businesses. Yes, they claim that they want to encourage UK businesses to train a UK born workforce - but, surely a better way would be to assist with apprenticeships or similar. These are graduate level jobs, and one of the reasons why the university sector has expanded over recent decades is that businesses have been handing over training to universities rather than pay for that themselves. If they are taking on non-EU graduates that implies that they are finding UK university education inadequate to prepare young people to work in their industries (either that the level of education isn't adequate, or the number of graduates is too small) and non-EU universities do better.
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on
:
It's now making the news over here, with dire warnings about how this could affect the relationship between the UK and Australia.
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