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U.K. to raise the bar for non-EU immigrants

LONDON: Highly-skilled workers from outside the European Union will face more restrictions from April as part of the government’s plans to protect “British jobs for British workers” in the current economic crisis.

The move will affect hundreds of Indian workers who come to Britain every year under the Highly-Skilled Migrant Programme (HSMP) which has already been amended several times to raise the eligibility bar.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said on Sunday that the government was looking at the new points-based system to make sure that it was “responding to the current economic circumstances”.

“I’m proposing, for example, that it shouldn’t be possible for somebody to come into this country to take a skilled job unless that job has been advertised to a British worker,” she told the BBC.

Under proposals, to be announced soon, eligibility rules will be further tightened and only those who have a postgraduate degree and already earn the equivalent of at least £20,000 a year will be allowed to enter Britain.

Ms. Smith said she had also ordered an investigation into the issue of migrants’ families coming to the U.K.

“There are all sorts of questions that we might want to ask here: their access to the labour market; the extent to which they, as well as the people that they are coming with, need to demonstrate the contribution that they are going to make to the U.K. economy,” she said

Tougher restrictions are also likely to be imposed on employers so that only those industries officially recognised as having skills shortage are allowed to bring in foreign workers.

The campaign group HSMP Forum said it would oppose any attempt to apply the proposed rules with retrospective effect.

“We will take a strong view if migrants who came under the old rules are affected by these changes,” its spokesman Amit Kapadia said.

Meanwhile, the government is under pressure to impose an annual cap on immigration.

A cross-party group of parliamentarians, including those from Labour, has said that unless a limit is imposed the country would not be able to cope with the pressure on public services. It recommended that foreign workers from non-EU countries should not be allowed to stay for more than four years. At present, any immigrant who has been here for five years is entitled to permanent residence.

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