UK authorities are considering tightening visa rules for hiring IT, telecom and engineering experts from abroad to fill jobs in that country as they seek to stem high levels of migration.
This has resulted in many Indian IT and engineering professionals annually migrating into the UK labour market to solve these shortages.
Potential changes could include raising the minimum salary or introducing regional restrictions within these areas across Britain.
Home secretary Yvette Cooper has written to Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) chair Brian Bell asking him to review why “IT and telecommunications professionals and engineering professionals” in the sector depend so much on international recruitment. “These sectors are within the top ten sectors reliant on international recruitment. The govt would like MAC to set out the reasons behind this. High levels of international recruitment also show weaknesses in our labor market which includes persistent skills shortages in the UK,” she added.
She said she wanted MAC to identify what is driving a shortage of employees and “how have they sought to respond beyond simply recruiting overseas.”
“Why can’t we use other policy levers in our immigration system so that sectors start looking at recruiting more from the domestic workforce?,” she suggested, adding that “the system does not serve national interest” when it comes to offering qualified workforce through a fair immigration process.
The report from MAC is expected within nine months. Ganapati Bhat, an IT consultant from Bengaluru who has worked in the UK since 2007 after arriving on the highly skilled migrant programme, told Parami News: “There is no need to change the policy around this just because there is noise around immigration. We can hardly fulfil the vacancies in Britain as salaries for some of these jobs are not that great compared with India and US taking into account cost of living.”
