If you read the headlines you may think that Vince Cable, Business Secretary is criticising the Cap on immigration, well if you look at the detail your see its the temporary and arbitrary cap that he is criticising.
I was emailed this today by someone who works in IT;
'So the Lib Dems lost my support and vote yesterday when Vince Cable again insisted that a cap on non-eu immigration would hurt businesses who cannot recruit the right staff. He is missing the point. As far as businesses are concerned they cannot recruit staff AS CHEAPLY AS THEY WOULD LIKE. Surely the right way forward is to ensure graduates in this country are trained to be able to meet demand for jobs here, including company sponsored and maybe govt subsidised schemes? Nothing wrong with a bit of investing in your future is there?
I would imagine that Mr Cable's policy would ensure IT graduates will be the highest percentage of the post-graduate unemployed community, if they are not already. Am I missing something here? I thought economics worked like this:
High GDP from local populace = ability to spend and help business grow + good tax revenue (- overcrowding) = good services and a nice place to live / high house prices.
however
High GDP - lower paid workers from outside EU x additional drain on local services - watered down tax revenues + overcrowding - graduate employment = not a good place to live or have prospects.
Stick that on your blog!'
It is not wrong to say that some companies are considering moving jobs abroad because they could not recruit the staff they needed, when some of those companies moved here because of our employment laws. Cable is right campaign for the cap to be applied flexibly. It need to be much more targeted and clever, its too simple.
He's not alone in thinking this politicians from all main parties like Shadow Business Secretary Pat McFadden and Conservative mayor of London, Boris Johnson have also raised the issue.
Readers of my blog will know that I have covered this subject a few times, we need to protect jobs in Britain from on shoring of cheaper labour. I am not against immigration just wait to see a fair system. Immigration effects not just low paid jobs but professional jobs too. We must also bear in mind that emigration is part of this equation and to be a global player you need a certain amount of free movement of people just like in the EU.
In response to the above email I also received this reply;
'The temporary cap has disproportionately hit legitimate businesses and organisations that use only a small number of migrants workers, employ mainly UK workers and pay UK corporation tax. It does not affect the main abusers using intra company transfer visas.
I have 3 points to raise.
A) The distribution of tier 2 general certificates of sponsorship should consider the value of the sponsor. Those sponsors that mostly employ UK workers and pay the most UK corporation tax should have preference over those that don't. If a new business is going to employ a hundred UK workers but needs a couple migrant workers to start up then it should be allowed to bring those in. If a business plans to bring in 500 "engineers" then I would want to know why.
B) The tier 2 intra company transfer is not covered by the cap but is the most open to abuse.
C) Tier 2 migrant workers are tied to their employers and this seems a very illiberal way to run things. It is open to abuse and underpaying. Less than 1% of businesses have sponsorship licenses, so only a small group benefit from the system. If these workers are so vital to the UK then they should be able to move employers to give the maximum benefit to the economy. However many are doing low paid work (e.g. chefs on £8.40 per hour and care workers on £7.80 per hour) and they are likely to leave and do other better paid work (e.g. driving a taxi), so there really needs to be a lower UK salary limit of say £32k (median skilled worker salary) on tier 2. '
In the good old days companies would want to be here because of the skill and dynamism of the workforce. I still believe that is a valid pull.
Unfortunately the cap is the only thing on the table and the iterim/temporary cap is the first instance of that. It will cause problems.
The best thing about the cap is that it will force the government, business etc to choose what is best for the UK and implement rules that support this.
Today's link is to Stephen Tall who also has 3 points to make in FT interview: Immigrant cap hits economy, says Cable
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