Keir Starmer’s new immigration plan is an obvious and clumsy attempt to court Reform voters. What is worse is that it won’t make anyone happy: the Labour party has a traditionally immigrant-friendly stance and won’t be happy, Reform voters will see through this pathetic attempt to bring immigration numbers down, and highly skilled immigrants won’t be happy because they are being targeted unfairly.
The UK, and especially London, attracts millions of talented workers from all over the world. Some come to stay, and some leave after a while. They work in tech, finance, and pretty much all the sectors that make London the economic engine of the country. Let’s be clear about something from the start: the UK does NOT have enough homegrown talent to fill all the high-skilled vacancies in UK companies. These highly productive workers are a scarce and valuable resource, and unless we find a planet with (very) intelligent life tomorrow, we have to live with the fact that high-skilled workers are rare. And they are very well paid.
It is something of a miracle that in this economy and with this government high-skilled people still want to move to the UK. Maybe they haven’t heard of how bad things are over here, but who cares – they are coming and they are welcome. Yes, they are welcome, because it is people on the highest salaries that pay for the NHS, pensions, and pretty much anything you can think of. Many high-skilled workers make a multiple of the average UK salary, and attracting and retaining these individuals is essential for economic growth.
If UK companies become unable to attract this talent into the UK and hire them, they will simply hire these people somewhere else. What’s worse is that a company might simply not set up a base in the UK if the UK lacks both the human capital and the qualities to attract it. Similarly, people wanting to found a startup might think twice about setting up their company in the UK if hiring talent becomes harder (that is, even if Labour’s jobs tax hasn’t already deterred them).
Labour’s proposal does exactly this: it makes the UK less attractive for top talent compared to other countries. When people move countries, chances are that they think deeply about the consequences of their choice: salaries, quality of life, taxation, and access to permanent residence (ILR) and citizenship are all factors that determine how likely a person is to move to a certain country. Starmer’s proposal to double the time it takes to get ILR from 5 years to 10 years makes the UK a lot less attractive than other developed/comparable countries. Not to mention that these countries already have other advantages over the UK, like the US offering higher salaries and lower taxes.
On top of potentially losing out on top talent with top salaries, there is another economic disadvantage of making people gain ILR after 10 years instead of 5: once you get ILR you can do ‘whatever’ you want, like start your own company for example. Setting up a small business of your own isn’t feasible for people on a Skilled Worker visa, and forcing people to wait 10 years for ILR means people won’t be able to set up their own business as quickly. Again, less economic growth.
As if all of this wasn’t enough to deem the proposed reform completely misguided, here’s another thing: the increase to 10 years will apply to immigrants who are already living in the UK and who might be close to getting ILR. This is, frankly, immoral. People who have come to the UK under a certain set of rules should not have the rug pulled from under their feet, especially if they are well paid and paying much more tax than the average Brit. It is now faster for many of them to relocate to the US and get a green card over there – the Labour party has already taxed non-doms out of existence, but they don’t seem to have learnt anything from the exodus of millionaires creating a black hole in the state’s finances.
And so it happens that highly productive individuals are becoming a pawn in Labour’s political games. Meanwhile nobody has stopped the boats coming from France or knows how to do that, a phone is stolen every what, 2? 3 minutes?, crime keeps rising and criminals cannot be deported – in case Labour were wondering, THOSE are the issues driving the anti-immigration sentiment. Targeting high-skilled workers to drive overall immigration numbers down will only mean less revenue for the state, but it will have no impact on the immigration-related problems people are facing. A much better option would be to increase the salary threshold for people coming to the UK (something the Conservatives already did, and which is already driving the number of visas down) and find a way to deal with criminals.