The UK government has announced a series of restrictions and limitations on the recruitment of overseas workers in order to reduce net legal migration, which has tripled since Brexit came into force. The new measures will lead to a reduction of about 300,000 people in the total number of migrants who entered the UK by official routes, according to estimates advanced by the new Home Secretary, James Cleverly, in the Westminst Parliament.
“Enough is enough,” said the minister after recalling that migration peaked in December 2022, with an annual net of 745,000 migrants. The acceleration has slowed this year and 672,000 were recorded in the 12 months to June, but it is still well above the 240,000 officially estimated before the departure from the European Union, when EU nationals had freedom of residence and work in the United Kingdom.
Brexit gave way to a migration policy based on a points system in correspondence with the situation of the labour market in the different professional sectors, from doctors to cooks, fruit pickers, truck drivers or graphic designers. The number of entries from the EU then fell and arrivals from the rest of the world skyrocketed.
In the House of Commons, Cleverly outlined the outlines of a “five-point plan” that restricts the choices and rights of businesses, including the House of Commons.
The minimum wage for skilled professionals is raised from the current €30,000 gross per year to a new ceiling of €45,000, which will apply from spring 2024. A similar level of salary must be declared by the foreign resident who requests to bring a dependent to the country.
Cutting the number of family members admitted on a work visa is the route chosen by Rishi Sunak’s government to contain legal migration. The Conservative ranks are pressuring the prime minister on one of the promises of Brexit, “to take back control of the borders” and demand that he stop the arrival of foreigners through legal channels and end the dangerous boat crossings across the English Channel.
The Interior Ministry is expected to announce in the coming days the new strategy to relaunch the controversial plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, after the setback of the Supreme Court.
Cleverly focused on Monday on the labour routes to the United Kingdom of a migration plan that must be, he said, “fair, consistent, legal and sustainable”. Health and social welfare, sectors where there is a shortage of labour, escape the high level of pay that the government demands in other professional fields. However, the number of family members who will be able to accompany each new social service recruit to the UK will be restricted.
The government will also eliminate a 20% wage discount from the national union remuneration that companies can now offer to foreigners in areas of labor without sufficient labor. It is a measure that the Labour opposition is calling for, along with other measures, in its programme to reduce net migration.