No visas for low-skilled workers, UK government says
bbc.com
bbc.com
For Japan, you still need to fulfill the requirements for e.g. normal work visa, but you get perks like preferential handling, shorter timed to permanent residency and getting visa for dependents.
On another note, this is going to suck for "low-skilled" brits who want to move around the EU as I assume EU put some symmetry to this.
Every nation has some kind of immigration policy and the vast majority of nations don't provide many visas for low-skilled workers.
The example for the UK is Australia/Canada points system for regular migration, which is exactly what the US (or anyone else) would do were there some kind of meaningful reform to its system.
Canada does provide quite a number of temp-worker spots, but it's in a different scenario than the UK, i.e. no need for swaths of workers in remote areas like the Oil-Sands.
That there are no special status for EU citizens I think is fundamentally part of the negotiating position, and within a couple of years, my bet is that EU citizens get 'more points' than others for whatever kind of work and visa-versa.
That the headline leads as 'No Visas for Low-Skilled Workers' I think is unfair as it's not representative of the reform, which on the whole is as to be expected.
It is called the 457 and it was abused so badly that it was abolished but still sort of remains. But during that time the government absolutely knew the extent of low skilled workers flooding into the country. All the parties loved it especially since Australia needed cheap labour to work at the 7/11 or drive Uber cars.
We also abuse the living daylights out of backpackers who are forced to work in low skilled jobs e.g. picking fruits in order to qualify for a second round of the Working Holiday visa.
The days of Oil Sands being an employment powerhouse are over. In fact there isn't much labour demand anywhere in Western Canada at the moment.
Also to my knowledge, it's possible to gain citizenship in Japan after only five years of constant time in the country, so long as you're legally there, you can pass a basic Japanese language test (or write an essay), and show evidence that you can support yourself financially.
Yes, it does (minimally).
If you saw what the low skilled people were like both professionally and socially, you would understand why.
Your median foreign-born English teacher is at worst a neutral additions to Japanese society, and many have some upside.
Note that I am saying this as someone who does not have a high opinion of tour ELT folks in general, but I still think it’s true.
I'm actually applying (after finishing my MEng degree this year) to do it for a year or two, and I'm also applying to pass JLPT N3 :-)
An engineer with N3 is great.
An English teacher with N(anything) is meh.
Interestingly, the best English teachers can probably make more than the median engineers, but that’s a marketing issue.
Stay true to your path, and learn something about the culture. If you dig it after a year or two, then switch to being a go-between.
Folks who can bridge cultures are invaluable and are priced accordingly.
Skilled visas basically only require a degree and a job. They are straightforward to get.
Until recently Japan essentially filled its low-skill labor with students: You could work 28 hours per week on a student visa. Recently there has been a crackdown on this and a new "specified skills" visa created to try to replace student workers, however it is not yet popular[1].
[1]https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/01/21/national/japans...
Many EU countries have such high unemployment that they shouldn't be facilitating low-skilled foreign workers in the first place.
I noticed a lot of young English and Australian people working in Italy, in the tourist areas, when I was there last. I understand that having the language (of tourists) is an attractive value proposition in exchange for low wages, but when the rate of unemployment for young Italians is so high, it felt very off to see them filling those positions.
Italian graduates do not work menial jobs. They stay at home living with their parents or they emigrate if they can't get a professional job in Italy. And the level of English fluency in Italy is really, really low outside the professional classes. It's not the Netherlands.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/04/26/national/japan-...
Well, that's sort of the point; keep the brits in Britain, get them to fill in the gaps in the job market there (like nursing and teaching, etc) instead of leaving the country. Also, by limiting the supply of workers, you might drive up the pay in those sectors as well.
This all makes sense in theory; drive British people into sectors in need of workers by limiting choices, and remove foreign labor from those sectors to make room. The hope is better jobs for British people, wages stay in the country increasing tax income and money in circulation, and possibly resulting in higher salaries (because salaries were held down by the willingness of foreign workers to accept lower income than locals... at least in theory).
What they haven't talked about however is that in a free market this should drive up the salaries of nurses and teachers, but the govt. refuses to add additional funding to those sectors, so unless they do something the NHS and the education system will basically implode over the next 10 years.
Feature, not bug.
It feels like living in a Kafkaesque reality where people vote for people who are there to primary f them up. And then those people cheer them up.
This isn't true. It's really quite astonishing how often I see this claim being made and it's simply fake news, deception, whatever you want to call it. Here is a graph of NHS funding:
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/nhs-...
As you can see, it goes up reliably every year. That isn't "refusing to add additional funding". In fact here they are, saying funding will continue to rise:
In July 2018, the NHS was given a new five-year funding deal that will see some health spending rise by 3.4 per cent on average from 2019/20 to 2023/24
and
In the September 2019 Spending Round, the government announced further increases to budgets for capital investment, public health and the education and training of the NHS workforce
NHS funding only ever goes up. Now, I know where this conversation goes. I've seen it many times. Someone replies and says, ohhhh, we don't mean literally they refuse to add additional funding. What we mean is we think they haven't been adding enough. But that is a very different claim, which is why people start out by claiming something false.
Especially in politics, precision matters.
I first moved there to study a MSc degree, which I could afford because EU students paid the same fees as the British (and those fees were significantly lower then). Some time later, I came back to the UK because my partner was doing EU-funded research at a British university, while I continued working for an EU company remotely.
I’m aware that mine is not the stereotypical immigrant experience, but I did meet a lot of Europeans that were similarly spending their best years in the UK.
The British had something precious until not long ago: a working welfare state, a welcoming society, and an influx of enthusiastic citizens from all across the EU. It’s sad that they are throwing it all away.
The British have many more precious things that that.
They also have a rule of law determined by the BRITISH (NOT Brussels), responsive and accountable government (even though of course trade offs must always be made), and still have enthusiastic citizens from around the world banging at the door wanting to get in. As well as a dynamic and capable population of natives willing to bear the costs and risks of really changing their society in the 21st century. And they are still a welcoming society, them feeling they are in control again will make them more welcoming, not less.
People counting out the UK yet are being very premature. There will certainly be economic pain from this and likely other costs, but there are potential big benefits too. Brexit is a story that will play out over the next 10-20-50-100 years, not just the next 5-10. Would not surprise me at all to find the UK a wealthy more developed nation than Germany by 2050.
Even when you look at the Boris Johnson Cabinet, the ideas and intent that is emanating from there is very promising. No more "we can't do this because Brussels" or "nothing can be done". Real thought into how to make the UK remain relevant in the 21st century on its own terms, real efforts into how to improve the country.
This isn't the End of History. This is the end of the insular old folks home the EU is at danger of becoming.
Snark aside, I think your comment is a useful example of a kind of patriotic (or dislike of international orders in general) motivated reasoning. Is the population of natives (perhaps citizens/residents would have fewer negative connotations?) really willing to bear costs and risks? It's a bit hard to know when there's been so much noise on the potential financial upsides/downsides of leaving the EU. Will people become more welcoming when freedom of movement is ended or does insularity have other costs? These are hard questions with difficult answers and patriotic optimism is no substitute. I'm certainly not prepared for you to assert anything about the cabinet being promising without proper justification.
All in all, I hope you're right. As far as I can tell the evidence is against you, but people survive falls from aeroplanes so stranger things have happened.
86% of the current population of the UK was born there. The overwhelming majority voted for the current Tory government and as such, for Brexit.
So therefore yes, I believe the natives are likely to bear the costs and risks.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign-born_population_of_the...
How in earth can you say the evidence is against that view? The U.K. is the most successful country in the history of the world, and it achieved all of it without the EU. The U.K. has an established track record of success without the EU. It’s the EU that lacks any antecedent historical evidence of long term viability.
Maybe your point is that, in modern times, you need to be part of an “international order” to be prosperous. Australia, Canada, and Japan are stark counter examples—they’re richer than nearly every EU country and have achieved that without ceding sovereignty to an international body.
You might be too young to remember, but before joining the EU, the UK was something of a failed state. It had to go cap in hand to the IMF begging for handouts, the rubbish was piling up on the streets, and so on. Look up the Winter of Discontent.
Brexit not a choice between the British Empire or the EU, it is a choice for being run by Johnson’s SPADs rather than a sane government.
Leaving the EU won't stop the twilight years for a generation of people that want things the way they never will be the same again.
I'm not so sure the system would really work if we had proportional representation, each government would have a questionable mandate and every decision would end up a compromise between coalition partners.
In the EU you can't really argue it has worked out, the lions share of the budget and regulations goes towards agricultural policies biased towards industrial french farmers and crops that operate in a much different environment than the countryside found in other nations. France and Germany bully the commission, and if the EU wants to take big decisions or persue a different direction it needs the consent of all 27 members, impossible!
I know this is changing with the loss of vetos and qualified majority voting, but don't kid yourselves that it's democracy. Your vote is meaningless. It would be better in my mind to enrich a benevolent dictator than to pin your hopes on a commission and parliament susceptible to lobbying and corruption. It is already clear to many they do not act in the interests of the European populace.
Hopefully it will die, and something better will form from its ashes.
But instead people end up voting for a party just because its the only one that can beat "the other", not because it actually represents their ideology. All the talk of freedom and sovereignty goes out the window when we concede that our only practical options are limited by the ruling system and not stifled by a foreign entity.
A meaningless vote to me is one that only counts for one and only one possible option in a vast sea of them. That's what PR and STV address better than FPTP in a democracy.
Bigger unions in the world are forming not dying and the UK will get eaten up by one of them or remain a secluded island of funneling suspect finances, it won't be the one pushing its weight around other big unions, it's the empire mentality that hasn't been shaken off and the sooner it fades the better decision making by the national government and people.
It's also not unlikely the UK constitutes just England and Wales at that point.
Zero net economic growth for 13 years (16 years with any inflation included) while adding six million new people (10% population expansion). GDP in 2006 of $2.7 trillion; GDP of $2.7 trillion in 2019. That's a recipe for disaster as each person starts seeing their slice of welfare state pie shrink. Maybe they could hike taxes further to compensate some. Eventually you have to generate economic growth to go with the population expansion, or else the population will begin to react badly.
Are you unable to fulfill any of the above? Or are you saying that the criteria is onerous for the average immigrant? If so, would be curious to hear your thoughts on that.
Looking at this point system seems that it will be easier for me to get into the UK:
- STEM PHD (Comp. Sci) 20 - More than 25 GBP (I would look for a Sr./Tech Lead or managerial position) 20 - English speaking (well... I did write a PhD thesis in English so I try my best haha) 10 - Job at appropriate skill level: That reads subjective but I assume it will be easy to confirm 20 - Job in Shortage Occupation: 2136 Programmers and software development professionals: 20
So it seems that I would cover the 70 points even without a job offer. Now I only need to find the right company.
I guess I "like" this system because it looks skewed towards people with my profile.
Nowadays, if I wanted, I would be able to move to the UK as well. Would I do it? Probably not. It’s sad, but I wouldn't want to go back to a place that is becoming more and more unwelcoming.
Maybe the UK’s working welfare system can’t cater for all of Europe’s economic refugees plus the middle east’s conflict refugees.
For a representation of a labour market + immigration free-for-all, at least in theory, I invite you to live in Brussels for 12 months.
Dilapidated infrastructure, abandonment by national population, high levels of petty crime and a de-facto skills test where regardless of who you are and how well educated you’ll fail a job interview if you don’t speak both fluent French and Dutch. A simple way to keep the _good office jobs_ for the locals.
That is once you jump through the many bureaucratic hoops-on-fire
That seems entirely reasonable in a country that speaks French and Dutch. Try getting an Engineering job in the US without speaking English. Even in low skill retail you need to speak Spanish, English, or both preferably.
Which European economic refugees did you have in mind? The ones that live on benefits while simultaneously stealing local jobs?
The first time that I read about this argument in relation with the support to the Brexit I was a bit surprised.
Do you guys really believe in that? Massive amount of people from Germany, France, Italy, Belgium or Spain demanding refuge from those extremely damaged countries, and requesting support from UK?
But I must note something. Where I live I actually see in the hospitals (in medium and big cities) queues of lots British refugees looking for a better health care. If you take the train in those places you will not listen the local language, but only some Cockney variation of English.
That’s a breathtakingly arrogant assertion. The UK and it’s constituent countries have a 2,000 year history. England invented parliamentary government—it eased gently into democracy several hundred years ago, whereas on most of the continent, democracy had to be achieved through violent revolution. Much of the EU didn’t even achieve democracy until the 20th century. It invented many of the concepts of legal rights that are encoded in law across the world. Many countries around the world have language in their constitutions that traces its origins back to the 800 year old Magna Carta. Countries that use British law account for 40% of world GDP. English speaking countries account for a quarter of the world’s GDP. The EU is a tiny blip in British history.
Well you cannot check out the alternate world where this didn't happen.
How can you be a proponent of democracy at home and still be a colonialist ? To give an example of this British schizophrenia, John Stuart Mill, who wrote On Liberty, worked for the EIC for 35 years. I am still trying to understand how he would reconcile this with what he wrote.
Please be encouraged to continue trying to understand and resist falling into the easier binary explanation currently popular in politics. History is your guide.
I understand one can hold conflicting ideas knowingly or without realizing the contradiction between them. Or may be you don't have an option because it is the only game in town.
We see this analogue in our own times, people support freedom yet work on mass surveillance technologies/companies willingly. Do they not understand where it leads ? or just ignore it, or shrug helplessly.
You must be joking. If you look at historical share of world GDP, or (most strikingly in the case of Ireland) historical population, you get a very good picture of the 'benefits' of english institutions. Ireland has still not recovered to the pre-british occupation population levels.
? The welfare state is not really changing, why would this be part of your point?
? The UK is always among the most welcoming nation in Europe to new migrants. The ideology betraying 'Brexit' as somehow implying the UK is toxic to others is false, people keeping saying this but the data says the exact opposite.
Various Pew Surveys concerning attitudes towards migrants put the UK always within the top couple of nations with respect to tolerance on various issues. [1] Literally, the UK is one of the countries least likely to want 'fewer migrants' (this is 2018) [2].
Here's some more data [3]
Also, for example, the mayor of London is Muslim, and up until last week, the #2 most powerful person in the UK was Muslim, the #3 most powerful person is a woman of Indian heritage. There's been very little fuss over that.
So I think it's basically inconsistent with reality to lament the UK as somehow 'unwelcome' especially relative to most EU nations (almost all of E. and S. Europe) which are borderline hostile.
? EU citizens will be able to come to the UK, but now that it's not a part of the EU, obviously, there'll be some kind of paperwork required. If you have an education, a specific job, or you marry your partner etc. I suggest it won't be that hard.
Finally, I would say that odds are even the UK gives more points to EU citizens after trade negotiations than they do people of other nations. Within about 2 years it will be easier for EU citizens than others.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2014/05/12/chapter-3-most...
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/03/19/europeans-cred...
[3] https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/uk...
And since last week the #2 is a man of Indian ethnicity. There is a quite decent chance that the first non-white PM of a major European country will be a Tory in post-Brexit Britain. (Certainly, it’s the most likely to happen in the U.K. Meanwhile, what are the odds of say an Algerian PM in France or a Turkish PM in Germany?)
Talk about the irony.
(1) They already had a major shortage for low skilled workers to assist in agriculture and social care. And yes they have tried to raise wages and encourage UK applicants with little success. Given the lack of consultation with the agriculture industry I am guessing they are just going to let it wither and die.
(2) Given how poorly the Home Office has treated EU citizens wanting to remain in the UK as well as scandals such as Windrush I can't imagine too many people trusting them to look after you over the long term.
Now that it is going to dry up what is the long term solution for health and social care workers for example.
You can't automate genuine human compassion and understanding with a DL neural net.
I'm located in the US and they moved many of the LS/ML jobs overseas decades ago, so we can expect a consorted effort from the UK, US and AU kindly stating that selective immigration is in everyones best interest.
It may also be a guise to limit fallout from climate change migration, but that remains to be seen.
This is what happens in Québec immigration department. Red tape and mismanagement.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/french-thesis-immigr...
Are you talking about the previous immigration framework or the new one CAQ has implemented.
Same in Australia, so many "skilled" workers that are driving taxis, driving uber eats, working in 711, doing tier 1 tech support, etc. It's a good idea in theory but the implementation is horrible, especially when there is high youth un/under employment. It get's even worse when you combine it with the "education" paper mill industry.
It's not being played by low skilled workers. It's being played by wage suppressing mega-cops such as Tim Hortons and McDonalds and low skilled migrants from places like India are unsurprisingly jumping at the opportunity to get out.
No takers from the UK nationals for low-paid jobs, UK workers say.
Country dies from lack of telephone handset sanitizers.
Yes because non EU labour tend to have fewer enforceable rights. I don't think this is about raising any thresholds, its more the opposite lowering the barrier for exploitation of low skilled non EU labour. At least in a business/financial sense.
I am just glad they left the EU. The problems with their government can only be solved by the British themselves and the EU doesn't help here, nor would I want any of these developments jumping over to other countries.
The need for low skilled workers is probably just for exploitation purposes. That seems to be the case in most instances. For now, the British and other EU countries are better off separated. Politicians have to answer the voters and they should have the last word on any visa or immigration debate.
Does Germany not do the same through NetzDG?
Farmers in the UK typically hire hundreds of thousands of seasonal unskilled labourers, with many crops (fruit, asparagus) having no mechanised harvest option.
Farmers have already been struggling with shortfalls since the vote to leave the EU but this is going to kick them over the cliff edge. Tories get a lot of financial support from these land owners. Can't imagine they'll be too happy if their income rots away in a field.
It's actually what it says it is: a 'points-based system' which is the modus operandi for most nations that have had reforms in recent history.
Any nation that had to invent its migration scheme from scratch in 2020 would end up probably with something resembling this.
In a mess of negotiations and unknowns during Brexit, this is actually one of the least surprising, predictable outcomes.
Anyone with actual experience with the home office and British immigration since the coalition knows that the “points based” slogan was hollow. It’s not like you trade away the job offer requirement!
It's been partially implemented, but 1/2 of migrants previously from the EU and that's obviously going away, to be replaced with a full points system.
"Here is the new migration policy ... which is based on a modern points systems that other nations have", which is fully what is expected.
So where's the 'canard'?
In fact, since at least 2009 it has had one for non-EU migrants -- to middling effect -- and the new PBS is not significantly different except that it now applies to EU migrants.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1pZfFY132Q
I think she lacks nuance and leaves little room for debate, but still worth listening.
Also we may not like it, but the UK is a democracy and the xenophobic sentiment of the population has to be taken into account in designing immigration laws. It seems politicians have failed at convincing voters that low-skilled immigration is actually good for them.
Can someone from the UK chime in and explain those?
- Housing benefit
- Employment and Support Allowance
- Pension credit
Essentially, social security benefits which you are entitled to based on your income for the most part. If you earn below a certain threshold, you are eligible for these. Currently, EU migrants are entitled to access these on the same terms as UK nationals but that will be changing in the future to the same terms as non-EU migrants.
It’s not really a surprise....
It's difficult to comment on this one policy without contextualizing what's happened to Britain as a whole over the last few years, and a lot of it has been pretty ugly.
Many tech workers have moved to the USA, for example.
What would it take you to live somewhere else?
Should we expect a tech worker to halve their pay and move from LA to London if there was a better relationship between Britain and Europe?
I am skeptical that this policy has any direct bearing on your future decisions, but it is a pretty good way to make a political point as it's good to have outside perspective.
edit: based on the downvotes there's a significant number of HN participants who believe that the best either isn't the top 10% or fewer, or the best shouldn't be paid for their skills. Interesting.
Eventually you get the situation in the U.S. where electricians and union garbage collectors make more than mechanical engineering PhDs, because they aren't importing more electricians the way they're importing engineers.
It's one thing to make a moral or ideological statement on immigration, but it's another to deny the economic reality. Unless we change the way our economy works and how we allocate money, there is a finite amount of capital available to given sectors. Surely no one would argue with the extreme example, like what if every single adult in New York was a roboticist--how much do you think working roboticists in New York would get paid?