With the best of intentions Iain Duncan Smith seems to have said all the wrong things when he spoke in Madrid last week about the need to exclude foreigners to allow native Britons a free run at jobs.
“These were very, very irresponsible comments,” Afrene Campbell, of Beachcroft, says. “The overwhelming majority of entrants to the UK for employment are European Economic Area [EEA] nationals and the Government is powerless to stop this under its European obligations. The hint of a suggestion that employers should discriminate on grounds of nationality or ethnicity sends out entirely the wrong message to business.”
Of course, we have been around this track once before with Gordon Brown’s call in 2007 for “British jobs for British workers”. Yet the genuine hotspot issue is “British students for British jobs”. On Monday, a number of significant regulations came into force that will effect Tier 4 students and their right to work in Great Britain.
The immigration rules have been revised to restrict work entitlements so that the only “foreign” (that is, non-EEA) students who will be permitted to work part-time during term time and full-time during vacations will be those who are sponsored by higher education institutions and publicly funded further education colleges.
There will also be restrictions on the immigration of dependants of those students. “These changes are aimed”, the Government says, “at delivering a strong migration system that tackles immigration abuse while allowing genuine students to study at genuine colleges.”
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So, back in the real world, the Government is indeed attempting, within the limited scope available, to apply ligatures to choke off admission to the UK to all but the brightest and best from outside the EEA.
The centrepiece of immigration policy is the points-based system that was designed to be clear, objective and efficient. It has some admirers but most immigration lawyers who engage with it regard it as cumbersome. “The system is complex and the rules are continually being tweaked so that it is very difficult to keep up with the changes,” Michael Bradshaw, of Charles Russell, says. The result, Bradshaw adds, is that he has had clients who have planned to set up new business in the UK but have decided not to go ahead because of the obstacles and delays involved in bringing in senior executives from outside the European Union.
It is the small and medium-sized businesses — the creators of new jobs — that are particularly adversely affected, says Sean Nesbitt, of Taylor Wessing. “If you are a large multinational company then intercompany transfers are not too difficult to arrange, and, similarly if you are a big company that has an established sponsor licence [for immigrant recruits],” Nesbitt says. “But if you are a smaller business or a start- up then it is a big deterrent.”
Ben Sheldrick, of Magrath, points out that the caps placed on the number of work permits have not been reached and this underlines that the system is deterring companies that want to play by the rules. “There are just such a huge number of compliance obligations around sponsorship”, he says, “that some businesses just don’t want to become involved.”
Audrey Elliott, of Eversheds, says that the complexity of the system means that unless an organisation has a very sophisticated human resources department it will be forced to use a lawyer to steer it through the bureaucracy of the UK Border Agency and then stay on track as the rules subsequently change. “This all adds to the cost of recruitment,” she says.
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As some lawyers suggest discreetly, however, behind the public debate what really worries the politicians are anxieties about illegal immigration, people trafficking and the black economy. But the fear of accusations of racism makes this is a taboo topic. How long will that continue?