Temporary cap on immigration
The Home Secretary, Theresa May, has recently made several announcements and statements about government immigration policies. The government intends to introduce a “temporary cap” on immigration from outside the EEA. This apparently will take the form of a limit of 24,100 working migrants to be admitted into the UK from some time in July 2010 until April 2011, ie a period of some nine months. This is, however, said to be only a five per reduction on recent immigration figures.
The government also intends to introduce a “permanent” cap on non-EEA immigration in April 2011 (but we note that, in our experience, nothing in immigration is “permanent”), and Ms May has published various proposals about this. In this connection, debate in government and business circles is likely to be fierce. Already Cabinet members, other politicians and business leaders have criticised any measures which will limit the ability of businesses to recruit skilled overseas workers and, particularly bearing in mind that the UK is currently struggling to emerge from recession, any “permanent” cap may be not as restrictive as some people fear.
Ms May has also indicated that there may be restrictions put on non-EEA students coming to the UK. However, as is well known, overseas students bring a great deal of foreign currency earnings into the UK and also create a lot of employment in the education sector. So, again, any restrictions may be limited.
Finally, Ms May has also indicated that non-EEA migrants – or their employers – will have to take out private healthcare when they come to the UK, so as to take the strain off doctors’ surgeries.
