Changes to immigration rules announced by Starmer

[OneAmberFinch]

Full white paper here is extensive and announces changes to all avenues of migration - basically their approach to resolving the issues of massively increased migration from 2019-2023/4.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6821aec3f16c0654b19060ac/restoring-control-over-the-immigration-system-white-paper.pdf

And Starmer's commentary on the BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/ce810e3z6dkt

Handful of headline changes: default timeline to get ILR to go to 10 years instead of 5; abolishing new care worker visas; raising skills threshold for Skilled Workers back up to graduate level; increasing minimum grades required for student visas; various bits and pieces around English language requirements among several other policies

This is not enough. We need a wholesale reset and pause on all immigration (with the exception of students and medical staff) so we can deal with the most almighty backlog and acute housing crisis.

We need to integrate and care for the people that are here already. We need a huge shake up and a reset. Anything else is tinkering around the edges.

I’ve just said in the last few posts Reform are the competition. Why are you struggling?

Look forward it’s Reform that will beat Labour.

This is just reinforcing a point I keep banging on and on about: talking in generalities about things like "universities" is pointless when there is such a huge gulf between the best and worst in the sector.

Quoting again from the linked substack. This quote is from the official government-commissioned MAC review he is reporting on:

"Approximately 10% of international postgraduate students in the UK who attended a university ranked between 1 and 200 (the highest ranked) globally went on to obtain a Graduate visa, whilst 30% of those who attended universities ranked 800+ went on to obtain a Graduate visa."

i.e. the people who went to the low-tier universities are the disproportionately ones using this route, not Cambridge nuclear physicists

And the huge influx of new student visas mentioned above is disproportionately going to low-tier universities. Quoting the substack author this time:

"it is striking how concentrated the growth of student visas has been among less prestigious universities. The share of visas for the top institutions had been going up. Since the graduate route launched it has plummeted"

Screenshot of that graph attached. The axes are a big misleading. The drop is from 50% to 30% but the axes make it look like it's to 0.

Nobody is bothered about immigration for work purposes - why on earth have they stopped care homes recruiting from abroad? Seems like madness and will negatively affect the elderly care system.
It's the people illegally coming in on boats that people are concerned about.

I think everyone in that nested quote thread agrees on that point! Certainly not without drastic change from the Tories which they're unlikely to do (deep purge of MP ranks etc)

To be fair I think the Tories tried but came up against dodgy Human Rights Lawyers who claimed that the checks were "intrusive and distressing". Dentists refused to do them and x-raying people was deemed a health risk ( ! )

Now we have the Nationality & Borders Act 2022 w3hich makes these investigations a lot easier.

It's knee jerk reaction to Reform's success.

They have to be seen to be doing something or they will soon be out on their ear'oles.

Is it contentious that Reform are leading the polls? No.

The point is that if you don’t support them (after all I don’t) then you need to unpick why the UK has reached the point it has. Look at the evidence. The discussion on migration in the last 14 years was imo dishonest.

Reform aren’t the government so really they aren’t going to have a nuanced policy. They can bang the drum. Labour do need one and quickly.

This is quite interesting on Yvette Cooper who is pushing on this as Home Secretary (ignore puff piece elements re sense of humour and Chardonnay).

www.politico.eu/article/anti-farage-yvette-cooper-vs-reform-uk/

All my posts have been clear. They state Reform is leading and are the ones who will likely beat Labour. The pp seems to be reading something else.

You don't appear to understand the complexity of employing someone from abroad. I did it once, it's a legal and administrative minefield and I would never want to do it again. People do it to fill vacancies they can't fill with UK workers and they have to be able to prove that is the case.

Actually same thread

Labour didn’t have nuanced approach pre GE either and are only reacting to Reform as they start to panic.

When did you employ someone? There hasn't been a labour market test (i.e. requiring you to prove you tried to find a UK worker first) for some years.

I would expect from my experience that most companies sponsoring are probably either large companies with streamlined processes (e.g. IT consultancies) or if they're small, are trying to get a specific friend/relative into the UK from their home country. I have known people do this from my own home country and it's a pain but there is a lot of demand for it and people want to help out their friends/relatives

Everyone who thinks immigration is a good thing that can never go wrong and that it will all finish in a happy multicultural rainbow where progress will prevail should visit Tower Hamlets indeed

I think that particular form of access looks like it will change quite soon. A small Brexit dividend; I mean we have these abilities now even if we’ve barely used them since 2020

Tower Hamlets! I remember the National Front and extremely sexist Islamic men when I lived there. It was hard to say which was more unpleasant though the NF were actually publicly violent. This was 25 years ago and I think where I lived has since gentrified (no longer resident).

I always laugh at these comments. The British were the original boat people!! 🤣

I don’t think that is an issue.

No NF to be seen anymore in Tower Hamlets. Roughly, it’s 50% bangladeshi conservatives, 15% mixed foreigners, 25% cockney, 10% cool kids.

But it’s not multicultural, people from different groups only mix geographically but not socially, you can’t change groups, leave groups, marry in other groups, every group has their own shops and services in their own languages, it’s segregated. And I bet it is getting worse, not better.

Maybe they were, but going back to 7,000 years really isn't going to help us much, is it ?

And what were the intentions of the Vikings and the French when they arrived on English shores in the boats- it's not really a good analogy.
If only the Celts had put the Vikings up in a Premier Inn and given them Cinema Tickets all would have been well.

HR lawyers can only act within the law, they don't make law, neither do judges.

The Nationality and Borders Act has done nothing, huge numbers coming here.

The Bangladeshis really seem to have the most steadfast prejudice against integrating. They so often don't attempt to speak English or mix. If you are the mother of a child at a predominantly Bangladesh-origin school, it is lonely at the school gates as they cluster with their own and won't return your greeting or speak English at all. They absolutely hate dogs and often other pets, too, and encourage the next generation to be terrified of them. The wives often presented with the most terrible bruising at the place I used to work. Because the mothers are often so sheltered and isolated from wider society, they don't seem to have the slightest clue when their kids get into drug running on their electric scooters or acquire knives.

There is definitely self-imposed segregation there and you can see how divided society has become in some places.

My point is, which so far you seem to have considerable difficulty with, is whilst Reform may well beat Labour, they will annihilate the Tories.

This once great party may well cease to exist post 2029.

Tories need to address why they are doing so poorly against a v unpopular Govt.

BTW i believe Reform will form the next Govt, it may be 4 years and thats a long time in politics, i just think, as with Trump, the electorate has had it both with the 2 main parties but Reform will not end the Labour party, it will the Tories.

@OneAmberFinch
@EasternStandard

"I do have to smile when people bring up Tory immigration policy as a sort of gotcha... to people who are probably even more furious with the Tories than they are"

I can understand the logic (although not agree with) of why the Tories or the right would be in favour of large scale legal immigration for "low skilled" jobs . It enables employers to hire at lower wages and less favourable working conditions with less cost on training, thereby increasing profits / lower costs thereby keeping inflation lower.

Displaced UK nationals that become unemployed or economically inactive can then be explained away as unemployable / lazy / welfare dependents etc.

Any objections from white UK nationals working class can be shut down as being racist. Any objections from brown or black UK nationals working class can be shut down as both racist AND pulling up the ladder behind them.

What I simply can't understand is why left wing voters and even the Unions are in favour of large scale immigration for low skilled jobs. And then to also express concerns on how restrictions on immigration it is going to hit the profitability of such employers is beyond me.

Yet it was the Tory government that increased low skilled immigration with Brexit and post covid.

Whilst low paid, social care work is not low skilled.