By a narrow margin, Engineer readers support a points-based immigration system to ensure that industry can recruit skilled engineers from overseas
The subject of immigration was a contentious and divisive one throughout the EU Referendum campaign, and continues to divide readers of The Engineer. The leading option in last week’s poll changed almost hourly over the course of the week, and the result remained close until the end. With a strong response from 543 respondents, there was no overall majority, but the leading option with 43 per cent of the vote was for a points-based immigration system which, presumably, would favour the qualified people required to fill specialised vacancies in the engineering and manufacturing sectors, among others. The second-placed option, on 40 per cent – only 16 votes behind – was for free movement of EU nationals, the system that remains n place until the UK leaves the European Union.
The rest of the options were all in single percentage point figures and none attracted more than 40 votes. The next option, on 7 per cent, was that we should accept tariffs on trade as a trade-off to limit immigration; almost certainly not an option that would please our larger exporters. While 6 per cent declined to pick an option, 5 per cent said that UK industry should look to fill its vacancies from the Commonwealth nations which, with the formidable output of qualified engineers from Indian universities, would presumably lead to an increase in immigration from the sub-continent.
Please continue to send us your views on this subject
Regarding the point of Commonwealth applicants, being a Commonwealth citizen working as an Engineer in the UK myself.
It would be hugely beneficial for Commonwealth citizens to be given more of an even playing field to EU citizens. As it is, non-EU citizens need to wait for 3 months while being compared to applicants throughout the EU. Companies end up choosing someone less skilled to avoid the hassle and paperwork. This feels like a waste of talent and the so called skills gap would greatly benefit from less restrictions on Commonwealth Engineers.
Immigration is about the Economy
I was deeply disappointed that the Remain campaign were unable / unwilling to make a positive case for immigration, whilst at the same time acknowledging the difficulties it can cause.
1. Without the immigration of the last few years we would have a shrinking population (as would most developed European countries). A declining population usually leads to stagnation (e.g. Japan) and is even more problematical if you have a longer lived aging demographic.
2. Immigrants are predominantly young (18-30) and fit. They come for work. They have jobs and they pay tax.
3. Immigrants are foreigners. If they settle and have a family, the children are British!
4. A large influx of immigrants into a particular area does put pressure on local resources and communities. Government must do more than just recognise this and should support those communities accordingly. The EU should provide support across the continent for any such affected areas. Politicians must take a proactive responsibility.
5. A growing country will be economically successful, which, if properly shared (again politicians must take responsibility), will benefit everyone.
6. In other words, we need immigration
I can only conclude that the politicians are either afraid of immigration, which is Stupid, or afraid of talking about it which is Pathetic.
Spot on. I’m hoping that a pragmatic leader (Theresa May?) will negotiate with the EU to get the benefits of the single market, in return for getting the benefits of free movement of labour.
There will be a large minority (a subset of the 52%) of racists and illiberals that will be annoyed about that. Good.
The issue for a lot of reasonable leave voters (I voted remain) is that the UK has attracted more than its fair share of migrants compared with other European countries, so while the principle that was set up in the early days of the EU were about facilitating trade and growth, with the addition of latter entrants to the EU, the migration has tended to be mostly one way. That is partly down to the success of our economy, which is a good thing, but we are also more geographically constrained than many EU countries with the net result of sometimes extreme pressure on transport, housing, schools and health service. Most of the problems perceived to be due to immigration are purely the fault of successive governments failures to invest and provide adequate infrastructure and public services, so whilst the free movement itself is not a cause of the problems, it does exacerbate them by being a tap that we effectively can’t turn off, and because of public spending curbs and failures, it will take a huge effort to play catch up. So in a sense, the leave vote was the nation applying the emergency handbrake to try to give us space to regain some balance. The unfortunate result though is that once we properly leave we may not be able to recover ourselves back to the economically advantageous position we were in even if we manage to hammer out a deal.
According to the charts on this page http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34131911 (BBC, data source Eurostat) The UK has not ‘received more than its fair share’; it has received more than some and many fewer than others.
As I said, this is the view of many leave voters, not my view
Also, isn’t this link in relation to asylum seekers and non-EU migrants; I thought we were talking about EU migrants. Also, if you check the numbers, the UK is second only to Germany for total immigration: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Migration_and_migrant_population_statistics
This report from Oxford University says that EU migrants are 35 per cent of total migrants in the EU as a whole, a little under 32 per cent in the UK and over 70 per cent in other countries: http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/sites/files/migobs/EU%20migrant%20stocks.pdf
Dear Mr Schwarz – Er no, the UK does not ‘need’ immigration, or mass immigration. There are 8m British-born workers in below-average wage jobs who are desperate to move up the salary ladder, and also have first place in the queue for jobs, social housing, in-work benefits, university places, and much more, for themselves and their children.
A falling population does not lead to stagnation – that is not Japan’s main problem – getting its manufacturing re-started is.. There are thousands of English villages that are threatened by enormous new housing estates – all the size of rabbit hutches – mainly to house foreign-born migrants, very few of whom arrive with a job.
The problem with immigration control is setting the quantum. To access the Single Market (and it is definitely preferable to have a 500M strong home market, rather than 55M) we have to accept the rules of that access as others have. There seems to be no prospect of agreeing a “nearly-free”, “partly-free” or some other limitation on passage across borders, because any such inevitably means selection which the (soon-to-be former) trading partners will not accept in exchange for full access.
We are in a bit of a bind, and I, for one, can’t see a way out through a negotiated agreement. Thus, it would be preferable to have a prominent “Brexiteer” to lead the negotiation and express the eventual truth, as I see it, that there is no solution on immigration other than remain.
Otherwise, it is out as out can be.
Free movement within Europe (note – not just EU) would be useful but would need to be part of the negotiations to make sure it is reciprocal and not totally unlimited. To cover the concerns of some (whether they be considered excessive concerns or reasonable concerns), any benefits (in work or not) could be restricted to UK citizens only and the UK could restrict/remove the right of entry to those with a criminal record. Sounds a bit like “middle ground”, so unlikely to be considered.
If you listen impartially to what is actually stated nobody is saying no immigration.
Many countries have to control immigration because they have made themselves attractive and prosperous countries to be in.
Prosperity for all will ultimately be difficult to achieve without some level of control.
What engineered product has worked better left to just work without any control system to ensure it works to maximum efficiency.
Total uncontrolled free movement of people, faced with a migration crisis, has not helped the EU develop as it could have done if a control system had been in place and proportional.
i suggest the EU sadly is like an engine with the most sophisticated engine management system going but in face of unrestricted fuel put straight down the carburettor is likely to either be too rich and stall or over speed and tear apart.
Having been working in engineering for over 50 years i believe we need more than just academic career politicians designing the control system for the new world UK.
However, If they get it right we could go on and prosper like never before and it would be even better if we had a national media that supported success and talked the country up rather than like some broadcasters constantly looking to talk the UK down. Thank goodness for the engineering media like the Engineer.
UK Should only accept people with the skills that we need. People coming to live and work here should contribute fully to economy and culture. I have over many years enjoyed working and development with such people.
Isn’t that what mostly happens? The UK needs fruit pickers and plumbers, as either the locals don’t want to do the work, or don’t have the skills, or (in the case of plumbers and engineers) need(ed) a good dose of competition to make them effective.
Surely the first hurdle to address is how to deal with anyone who arrives to work in this Country (or any other host Country) and then abuses the privilege and hospitality. There needs to be a clear cut boundary that allows for incomers and their descendants who commit crime or spread fear and hate or just abuse our welfare system to be deported without reference to their human rights and what they may be sent back to.
The issue of ‘free movement’ would then largely evaporate as most citizens will accept competent, hardworking, honest neighbours regardless of origin.
There already are curbs and controls in place for benefits abusers and criminals – free movement is not carte blanch for bad behaviour. In any case, the vast majority of migrants are hard working honest people just looking to get on in life, so we really shouldn’t be painting a whole group of people on the basis of the conduct of a very small minority.
A points based system sounds nice in theory. In practice, it means some bureaucrats deciding what skills are worthy. Is one engineer worth 20 fruit pickers?
Why not let the market decide that? If there are jobs to fill, then people come and fill those jobs. If there aren’t, they don’t. Funnily enough, that’s the system we have right now.
One of the reason companies come to London is that they can access the whole EU labour market. With a points system, they can’t – unless they’re 100% sure that the bureaucrat in charge will agree with them.
If our small island is so attractive to so many other people, then we should only take the best to fulfil our skilled job requirements and that needs to be the best from the whole planet otherwise we risk discriminating against non-Europeans.
Points based system yes, but for all positions, skilled or unskilled.
There may be times when we need unskilled labour more than skilled, so keeping flexibility in the system is vital.
Basically a level playing field points based system for all nationalities who wish to work in the UK.
Does the EU have any tariff free trade deals elsewhere in the world?
Either way, I’m certain that “the politicians” will manage to make a total hash out of whatever they manage to arrange – probably to their own benefit though.
We are not in a strong position. There is a failure of leadership from the Leavers, who appear confused at having to deal with the consequence of their success.
If we have a “leave PM” then we seem to have a choice between a candidate who is practically unknown to voters and rather short of senior ministerial experience and a candidate who is well-known — who, as the potential PM, would have lost the general election for the Conservatives!
I don’t think that the EU will let us both have free trade and restrictions on EU movement. Why would they? We would not allow similar if it had been France that had left.
They are likely to allow us to have whatever other immigration we want to add.
We should be aware that the children of immigrants are likely [also] to be intelligent, educated, hard-working and ambitious. They may decide that they don’t want to be engineers – they may want to be surgeons, lawyers, vets, even MPs. They must have that right.
So if we think immigration is a problem because immigrants “steal our [top] jobs” we will only solve that perceived problem by educating and/or motivating the native Brits to do the jobs for which we now need immigrants.
Until we do that we need immigration. If we do that then we are likely also have the confidence and maturity to welcome the cultural diversity that balanced migration can offer.
The immigration thing is massively over done whatever it’s appeal may be to the baser aspects of human nature or as a device for political campaigning.
With a working population of 32m we had net immigration of 170,000 last year. In other words 0.5% of the workforce and only 50% of this from the EU.
The perception is that the number is far greater because the Press, notably (NewsCorp proprieter Rupert) Murdoch and (Daily Mail editor Paul) Dacre figured the referendum would be a great chance to shift a ton of newsprint. According to the press our NHS and Schools were about to collapse because ‘Johnny Foreigner’ and 169,999 of his mates had turned up. Absolute nonsense.
Murdoch and Dacre were right though. The referendum was a massive hullabaloo which shifted a shed load of papers even if the result was absurd.
However instead of worrying about immigration we should focus on the fact that 50% of European Headquarters are based in the UK. Why would they stay now?
Not only this, with the French and Germans no longer committed to behave in a friendly way towards us we should also fear for the continued domicile of the huge supply chains in automotive and aerospace markets that currently reside in the UK.
High immigration is a sign of success. When nobody wants to come here- that’s when we should be worried.
Completely agree. Good summary and your final sentence is absolutely the point.
I am sorry Desmond, but you seem to live on a different planet to most of the UK population.
We may need a nuclear physicist from China, or a heart surgeon from Egypt, and in the past pre-EU, that is exactly what we did. What we now have is a massive and uncontrolled influx of unskilled or low skilled people, who are a strain on both the benefit system and upon housing, schools, the NHS etc. We cannot build a new town the size of Coventry every year to accommodate them , and we do not wish to have our culture changed irrepairably. We need a strict points based system and a relatively high salary threshold. We do not need 20000 balti chef’s or 40000 Barista’s. In the run up to the Referendum the West Midlands evening news showed a company director who said in the event of Brexit she will have to move her company to Ireland. Her business ? Importing EU citizens to train as apprentices in UK companies. Essential immigration. I think not !
For unskilled workers, we have an army of unemployed people who are: 1- taking full benefits, 2- healthy and, 3- doing nothing all day. Offer them these jobs, if they refuse then trim their benefits.
This is already the case, where refusal to seek work or accept work training when it is found for an individual results in the cutting of their job seekers allowance.
What we need is to be able to control (sensibly) the inflow of people into this country as we have a limited land mass and limited resources, if we overload those resources we will all suffer. We also need to be able to remove undesirable people (criminals, terrorists, people who threaten the state or population,, unemployed) freely with no resort to external institutions such as the EU (commission or courts).
We do however need non UK citizens to come to the country to improve the skills base and improve our business innovations and therefore improve the business environment and output. Unfortunately our inept politicians (and all politicians worldwide) seem to incapable of recognising this fact and only seem to deal with easy insignificant issues .
This is why the UK voted to leave the EU as we have enough inept politicians of our own without being linked to the inept politicians throughout Europe who seem to want to dictate to countries what they should do instead of resolving the problems within their own countries.
Immigration is a fine thing if controlled so that infrastructures can be developed in line with numbers. Free for all is just that; uncontrolled and therefore unmanageable. Points may be one way, a cap may be another, but equality of source – EU or Commonwealth or other – is important. And putting the infrastructure plans along side this so there is no negative impact on existing population is vital. Europe will take whatever deal we offer them – they sell more to us than we do to them.
The Australian points system is too strict. See link below if you want to try it.
https://www.acacia-au.com/skilled-migration-points-test.php
It also discriminates on the grounds of age; if you are 40 or over, forget it.
This type of system will not provide the skills we need. The skill shortage already exists and this is is WITH free movement of EU citizens. How can this possibly IMPROVE by restricting immigration?
The existing points calculator for non EU citizens is now no longer available due to cost of management and maintenance. It would seem then that such a system for EU citizens would have considerable costs associated with it and would also deter many from even considering working in the UK. You will cut immigration but there will be an even greater shortage of skilled (and unskilled) workers, thus pushing up wages and making the UK less competitive.
The idea that we can convince all 27 EU member states to give us preferential access to the single market and at the same time restrict the movement of their citizens to the UK is ludicrous.
However, we have to accept the fact that the public perception of immigration is negative and in the short term this is not going to improve (regardless of what the truth may be). As such the government has no choice but to go with the democratic majority and impose immigration control, for good or bad. This will mean a downturn in the economy and if things don’t improve, the public may eventually change their view and subsequent governments may get the opportunity to remove the restrictions and negotiate a better deal.
In the mean time, we should make training & education a priority and grow the skills we need. The government needs to help businesses to train and retain skilled workers. The danger is that once people have the skills, they are free to go elsewhere to work if they can get better rewards outside of the UK.
It is such a shame that the short-sightedness of the leave voters and the lies spun by the campaign have won the day. The above simple and obvious truth seems to have eluded a large number of people. And again, it all comes down to perception, although getting to the truth on things like immigration and the associated social and economic benefits or burdens seems to be harder than it should be. But maybe we actually need an economic slowdown, painful though it will be, for people to see the what they have left behind. Then they might start demanding proper public investment from our own government which is at the root of the dissatisfaction and inequality felt by many communities currently blamed on Europe.
What is ludicrous is the EU, and a majority of the population have woken up to that. Markets and employers quickly adjust to whatever the prevailing rules and conditions are. What we need to do is get out at any cost right now in order to avoid the crippling costs which will undoubtedly occur when the whole EU project collapses, as it certainly will within the next 25 years. Getting out now is cheap at the price. Bring on Brexit and let us spread the wealth of the country throughout its population, not limiting it to the top 15 to 20% which the EU rules help to create an environment to perpetuate.
Currently we have a PM who has:_
a) refused to address both potential results of the referendum he has called.
b) deserted his post
We also have a Civil Service which lacks the ability to define and manage the contractual requirements.
I suggest the UK advertises under a points based system for a new Prime Minister and we actually get industry to define what the UK position is vis a vis the EU and the rest of the world.
3 Months should suffice if the task is correctly managed.
Please note that any comments including the phrases “Get over it” or “Stop whingeing” will be edited or deleted, depending on whether they also contain any worthwhile points. This forum is not intended to comment on the result of the referendum either approvingly or otherwise, but to discuss engineers’ opinions on how to proceed in the current situation. Such comments do nothing to further the debate and are discourteous to other correspondents and to the forum itself.
Isn’t that what mostly happens? The UK needs fruit pickers and plumbers, as either the locals don’t want to do the work, or don’t have the skills, or (in the case of plumbers and engineers) need(ed) a good dose of competition to make them effective.
As an engineer I and my colleagues never needed a strong dose of (foreign or other) competition to make us effective. In the case of the fruit pickers needed to carry out the work the locals don’t wish to do the answer is very simple. In the past the hop pickers would descend upon the countryside at harvest time, pick the crop and then return whence they came. There is no earthly reason why fruit picking labour could not be brought in on 6 month temporary visas, on the basis of a return home for a minimum of 6 months prior to any re application. The farming industry would have its workforce, people from poorer countries would have an opportunity to earn money here to take back to their communities, and we would not have an ever expanding population. Unless the farming industry is growing exponentially, surely we do not need to replace our fruit pickers with a new batch of permanent migrants each year ? The same argument could be made for most occupations. I remember life pre-EU, and we managed very well without the current migration, and the economy fared very well, as even teenagers had a healthy disposable income. We had sufficient police, teachers and nurses, and sufficient employees even though work was carried out manually and clerically, without the aid of automation and computers. In those days we were even having to pay off war debts, but we still had no problems in running our country.
It seems to me that the tariff free option with the 27 still in the EU is not a viable or negotiable option, unless we opt for the Norway and Switzerland model – where would have the same deal as before Brexit but no say in the rules and still pay the same £248 million per week, with unlimited immigration from the 27.
Switzerland have been negotiating for 2 years with no concessions, and already EU grants to Swiss universities have been stopped and other sanctions are threatened by the EU. The Swiss had a referendum where 50.2% or 50.5% ( sorry I cannot remember the exact number but it was around that level) voted to stop immigration and the Swiss government are bound by that, unlike Brexit which has to be ratified by Parliament. The Swiss have to choose between WTO tariffs and accepting free movement and their 2 years is up.
I see no easy way out of the EU, untangling all the academic and business relationships – never mind negotiating 80.000 pages of treaties – will not be an easy job; especially as we have less than 20 civil servants qualified to negotiate deals at this level. Personally I am saddened that we are leaving the EU, as I lived and worked in 3 EU countries for over 30 years, and know that it is not perfect; but to leave the largest trading bloc on the planet means tough times ahead for the UK for at least next 3-5 years. The consequences of limbo land for the next 2 years are already having a negative effect on the £ and on investment decisions – I wonder how long some companies will wait before cancelling investments and relocating factories but not the people?
However I recognise that we need to stay positive, accept the results of the referendum and negotiate a deal that does the least damage whilst controlling immigration (which seems to be what people really want). How that circle is squared we will find out by October 2018.
Wrong question asked. We will have to accept free movement of EU Nationals to gain access to the single market as Norway does. The question is whether we want single market access at that cost. BTW, Norway pay net a similar amount into the EU to that we do, so the deal we’ve just chucked away is likely to be better than the one we get next, if Article 50 is invoked after all.
Like most engineers I am inclined to international views and have worked in many countries and thoroughly enjoyed them. I like the idea of free-movement in Europe, but have little personal contact with the problems caused by immigrants, such as salary depression.
The correspondence reflects the general media driven confusion over immigration, we do not seem to be the best group to resolve / advise on this topic.
Why are people bringing plumbers and fruit pickers into the equation? this is about engineers and engineering, we have more engineers out of work then any other skilled sector in the labour market so why aren’t we employing these first. In reality it is all about corporate profit and little else, why would a company pay a suitable qualified engineer £60K and the company car, laptop, phone, pension, and health when they can bring in an overseas worker and pay them £40K, they use their own car, and aren’t bothered about a pension or healthcare package.
We should be employing our own first, if they don’t have the correct skill sets then retrain them, most engineers have transferable skills and if they have 90% of the required skills its only partial training to bring them back to where they need to be. Many engineering and other professionals find Jobcentres a waste of time as even the staff don’t understand engineering, they often cannot be bothered with the unemployed, or treat everyone as 18 year old illiterates who are on drugs.
Lets look at this logically, for every £1 of benefits paid out it costs £1.50 to administer so for every £100 paid out in benefits its costing £250 so its not rocket science or needing a degree in applied mathematics to divert this money into training or updating skills for engineers. Unemployed engineers cost money, employed engineers put money back into the system.
Foreign competitors who can hire whom and when and wherever will kick the backside of those who can’t.
When are the results of the salary survey? Or did I miss them?
You can find a link to the full results at the end of this article: https://www.theengineer.co.uk/salary-survey-reveals-ageing-workforce-and-junior-engineers-pay-drop/
I am struggling with the implication that the second most favoured opinion was to allow free movement of Europeans, while the least favoured was employing Commonwealth citizens because of the influx of Indian Engineers. If India is producing highly skilled and qualified Engineers, and the UK rejects them only because of their nationality…does this not imply racism, or zenophobia at the least? I am disappointed that an industry that harps on about the ‘skills gap’ is actively refusing skilled individuals.
Th only mention of Indian engineers was in the poll analysis; it should not be taken as a reason for people picking that option while the poll was open.
Agreed with Gibson, Andy – – moreover where does Schwarz suppose that growth should stop? Common sense requires some point, many people consider such a population is much exceeded for the UK in terms of overcrowding/overuse of all resources . UK has had an internally balanced population i.e births balancing deaths/ average “2.2-2.4” children per family/ for some years. Immigration has cased an unsustainable surge in population (Mrs Thatcher said this about 1979, nevertheless herself nor other politician has solved the issue since).
Far too many people are ignorant of this elementary arithmetic, and many countries ignore this basic requirement to avoid Malthusian results/death of the lemmings. Only China has tried to address this on a massive scale. Such a balanced population will have an average and median age of 40yrs, with current life expectancy. This requires making productive use of most people far beyond current retiring ages.