UK to increase ‘very high talent’ immigration in new plans
The number of people arriving on “very high talent routes” will be increased despite efforts to slash immigration levels.
The proposals are set out in a section titled ‘global talent’ in Labour’s immigration white paper, which was published on Monday morning and largely focussed on plans to cut net migration from a peak of over 900,000 in the year to June 2023.
An increase in the number of high-skilled workers immigration will allow the UK to compete to bring a “highly prized cohort” of entrepreneurs and leaders in a “fierce” global economy, the government document suggests.
Plans include doubling the number of workers that overseas businesses can send to the UK.
Under current rules, a company can send up to five senior employees to work in the UK for three years as part of the Expansion Worker route. There are also caps on the number of workers businesses can transfer to the UK on a seasonal basis but there are no clear limits on how many workers firms can sponsor on a Skilled Worker visa.
The white paper also details plans to increase foreign worker places for research interns working in artificial intelligence and other sciences.
It will also review visas obtained through the Innovator Founder and High Potential Individual routes, with the number of “qualifying institutions” able to offer high talent visas to be doubled.
The white paper claims reforms to high talent worker visas will help to “supercharge UK growth in strategic industries”.
Immigration has ‘ambiguous relationship’ with growth
Sir Keir Starmer delivered a speech on Monday morning claiming efforts to curb low-skill migration would not harm UK growth.
He said the link between mass immigration and higher growth “doesn’t hold”, adding that the lack of investment in training hampered the UK labour market.
Proposals set out by the government are expected to decrease immigration to the UK by around 98,000 a year, according to the white paper.
Professor Sergi Pardos-Prado, who specialises in migration studies and separately serves on the independent Migration Advisory Committee, which informs government policymaking, suggested that a stronger focus on attracting high talent was more likely to be beneficial to UK growth.
“The relationship between immigration and economic growth is actually more ambiguous than what we tend to signal,” Professor Pardos-Prado told City PM.
“For example, immigrants tend to go, tend to self-select themselves into booming economies, into places that are doing well. So they are not necessarily the cause for that growth. They are just something that happens alongside that growth.
“In all likelihood, the positive impacts of immigration on certain economic sectors are higher when immigration is highly skilled and highly qualified, and it is true that sometimes that, whenever we see a very small but slightly negative impact of immigration on wages, for example, that tends to happen in low wage occupations.
“I think that this is basically what the government has in mind,” he added.