Go back to your country

Priyanka Mehta Tuesday 25th February 2020 11:18 EST
 
 

Home Secretary Priti Patel delivered on her election promise of “taking back control of our borders” as she unveiled an overhaul of the UK’s current immigration system. The government believes that the Australian points-based-immigration system will weed out cheap EU labour across factories and retail outlets, creating jobs for the local British workforce. But, businessmen and industrialists explain the contrary challenges of staff shortage, burden of shelling out higher salaries, increased visa sponsorship fees among other logistics. 

Hospitality: Curry houses and restaurants

The Home Secretary believes that they are currently 8 million economically inactive British workers who can be trained by businesses to fill these vacancies. But, industry heads argue that the hospitality sector is likely to take a massive hit especially the 12,000 small curry houses operating across the UK- some who maybe on the verge of closing down owing to staff shortage.

“It is true that we have enough migrant workers in the UK. But we need to look at the practical scenario today. The fourth and fifth generation Bangladeshi children are not interested in working in the curry houses. 

“They are highly skilled and have built careers as professionals in law, medicine et al. We only need chefs not skilled migrants in the kitchen. The staff in these kitchens need to be only aware of the food & hygeine. And we don’t have any local British staff who are willing to work in restaurants as chefs and waiters. We were – and still are – struggling to get chefs to Britain from south Asia as the rules state you have to pay a salary of £35,000 to offer to a chef. This is simply unthinkable for a large number of smaller restaurants barring high-end chains such as Dishoom who constitute not even 30% of the industry,” explains Oli Khan, Senior Vice President of Bangladesh Caterers Association.  

UKHospitality chief executive, Kate Nicholls, said “ruling out a temporary, low-skilled route for migration in just 10 months’ time would be disastrous for the hospitality sector and the British people” and deter investment in the high street.

Agriculture: Our Great British Strawberries 

“Point-based immigration plan makes it hard for low-skilled migrants to work. This immigration plan will make biggest structural changes to the UK labour market in the decades. Government’s “a high-wage, high-skill, high-productivity economy” policy is not good for employers like us who employee low skilled workers.

“At present on our farm, we employ 90% of our workers from Europe which is the only source of labour for strawberry growing and harvesting. Under the new approach by Govt, the UK will be open to highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but the door to those with low skills will be closed. A grower would never be able to get any more labour from Europe,” explains Jaswinder Singh, Operations Director, Vicarage Nurseries. 

Vicarage Nurseries is a family-owned farm in Worcestershire, UK which was started in 1996 by Makhan Singh, and today his family is the only British Asian family in the business of growing strawberries. They employ around 250 seasonal strawberry pickers who go back to their European countries at the end of the peak season in October. At present they grows strawberries over a land mass of 100 acres and produces over 800 tonnes of strawberries annually. 

Last year, the Government started a pilot scheme called Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme (SAWS) with initially proposing permits for 2500 employees from outside Europe. The benchmark is now increased to 10,000 permits. It is noteworthy that in 2016 more than 77,000 employed in the agricultural industry were of non-UK origin. How is such a stark gap going to be addressed by farm-workers remains a challenge for agriculturists such as Jaswinder. He says,

“We will be struggling this year as it is not confirmed how many workers will be coming this year even as the immigration laws come into force from next year. We ourselves cannot have sponsorship licence as this is given to only two companies who control the employment procedure. 

“We tried before employing British workers. They are not willing to get their hands dirty in the field work. The licence to employ these people is only with two companies which the grower or employer do not have control and cannot employ people directly to their demand.”

Additionally, the British Poultry Council has said that 60% of its 23,000 workers are EU nationals, and the new rules "completely disregard British food production and will damage national food security".

“Unrealistic” immigration fees and sponsorship license

Those organisations who do not have an alternative but to recruit non-UK workers do have another route of recruiting EU workforces. Currently, some migrants can gain Tier 2 visas under the Tier 2 Sponsor License system with a salary of £20,800 per annum. But under the current system the cost of a Tier 2 visa sponsorship to a small employer exceeds £3,000. 

Now, according to a latest survey by the Federation of Small Businesses about 48 per cent of the 1,083 small firms surveyed said that they would be unable to meet the immigration fees currently levied on employers hiring non-EU staff if extended to EU workers. The study recommended that the cost of hiring EU and non-EU staff be below £1,000 for small businesses, with exemptions for the smallest firms. Branding the fees as “unrealistic” were it to be carried across to the government’s new points-based immigration system, the report notes that the extra costs would mean one in ten (11 per cent) small businesses would have to radically change their business model or close altogether.

“Against a backdrop of weak economic growth, record employment and an ageing workforce, it’s critical that we get this new system right, particularly when timeframes are so tight. Otherwise, we risk business closures,” Mike Cherry, Chairman of the FSB noted.

Meanwhile, concerned about the damage the overhaul in the immigration system will do to the cultural and financial fabric of the UK, Nazek Ramdan, Director of Migrant Voice said,

"By wrongly equating low wage with low skill, the Government is sending a message to all those in these jobs that they are unvalued and unwelcome. 

"We want an end to crude assessments of migrants’ 'value', whether that’s a salary threshold or a points target. We want to see a system that recognises that a person’s value to this society goes far beyond their earnings, one that celebrates and protects the richness that comes from the UK’s diverse communities."


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