Tory immigration policies get turned back

I copy this because I know I shall be constantly and referring to this to make a point.

From The Week - 29 October 2010 page 24 - politics & economics

In their manifesto, the Conservatives "promised a cap on immigration from outside the EU", says the Daily Express.  This "is now shown to be full of holes".  "A secret deal between the EU and India is being negotiated which would allow an unlimited number of Indian experts to take jobs in Britain without first making them open to British workers."  Sure, "if there's a shortage of specific crucial skills, attracting the best talent from wherever" makes sense.  "But allowing foreign companies here to recruit from home without limit is yet another case" of Britain being "captive to EU policies we neither like nor need".


Yet the problem with finding skilled workers isn't just confined to top-level jobs, says The Guardian's Bridget Anderson.  "Demand for migrant labour is deeply embedded in the British economy."  Training and apprenticeship programmes are well developed in many European countries, "producing workers with a wide range of transferable skills."   These staff do construction jobs in Britain "such as groundwork or foundation-building".  Social care also couldn't operate without migrant workers.  These jobs are low-paid and unattractive in some ways, but, even if they wanted to do them, "British workers may not have the hard skills for construction occupations, or the soft interpersonal skills required in many service sector jobs".

[This sentence means British workers are perceived to be the worst option.  A joiner from Essex I met in a pub assured me that he would never ever hire a local.]

Indeed, "trying to turn the Tory manifesto pledge into workable policy is proving as easy as grasping mercury", says Richard Ehrman in The Times.  "Rules and visas" will "no longer provide all the immigration answers, if they ever did".  Meanwhile, "millions of Britons are eking out their lives on benefits - an extraordinary indictment of the failure of our education system to provide many school leavers with the basic skills and motivation to get into work.  Barring productive non-EU workers isn't the answer.  Only benefit and education reforms will solve the problem."