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U.K.’s new immigration control measures

LONDON: The British government on Tuesday announced fresh measures to restrict the number of non-European Union foreign workers who would be able to come to Britain under the new points-based immigration system introduced recently.

It identified businesses that would be allowed to import overseas workers because of shortages of skilled labour in certain areas. Businesses that do not figure in the government list and which wish to bring in foreign workers would have to show they cannot find suitable persons at home.

The Migration Advisory Committee laid down a number of criteria, which employers would have to meet when seeking to hire overseas workers from outside the EU.

“First, the job has got to be skilled; second, there has got to be a shortage; and thirdly and perhaps most importantly, it has to be sensible to bring a person in — there we are looking at the tension between the short-run fix of bringing immigrants in and the long-run need to upskill the economy,” said the committee’s chairman David Metcalf.

The move came as the government rejected calls from a cross-party group of parliamentarians for a cap on non-EU immigrants, saying the new system was strict enough to ensure only those with skills that Britain needed were allowed into the country. Immigration Minister Liam Byrne said quotas were not the answer.

“Our tough new points system plus our plans for newcomers to earn their citizenship would reduce overall numbers of economic migrants coming to Britain, and the numbers awarded permanent settlement. Crucially, the points system means that only migrants with the skills Britain needs can come — and no more,” he said.

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