New Regulations For Migrant Workers

Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, announced yesterday that the government is raising the skills required from non-EU professionals in order to protect ‘British jobs for British workers’.

Highly skilled migrants will now need a master’s degree (previously a bachelors degree) and to be on a salary of at least £20K (previously £17K) and Employers will have to advertise jobs at JobCentre Plus for at least two weeks before hiring migrant workers.

To complement this the Home Office is also investigating the impact of the arrival of families of immigrant workers. Jacqui Smith commented that “there are all sorts of questions that we might want to ask here: their access to the labour market; the extent to which they, as well as the people that they are coming with, need to demonstrate the contribution that they are going to make to the UK economy”. On the skills shortage in the UK she also said “I am proposing that we should more clearly link those areas where there are shortages of skills in this country with actually trying to grow the skills within British workers.”

These combined measures are estimated by the Home Office to reduce those skilled migrant workers securing a visa from 26,000 to 14,000.

Unfortunately though employers have just over a month before the regulation comes into effect on 1st April!