Discussion
One of the 'legitimate concerns' about immigration is that foreign nationals are 'taking our jobs';
but actually what is mostly happening is that skilled immigrants are replacing skilled emigrants; skilled younger workers are leaving & their 'places' are being taken by skilled immigrants.
Of course, many unskilled jobs are also being taken by migrants, but the key issue isn't really the level(s) of migration but the range & type of jobs that are on offer in the UK!
I think one of the bits that’s often missed in this narrative is that importing skilled workers is cheaper than investing in training and that causes a secondary pressure. Skilled immigrants aren’t directly competing with unskilled domestic labourers because the domestic workers lack the necessary skills for the jobs. But they often lack the skills because governments and companies have no incentive to fund training to ensure that people have those skills.
When there’s a short-term shortage of a particular set of skills, importing people with that skillset is the only solution. When there’s a long-term shortage, you need to invest in education and training. Immigration is a very fragile solution because as soon as your country does something stupid (such as Brexit, or electing Trump), the supply of foreign skilled workers who want to live in your country contracts and you now have an even worse skills shortage because the lack of training and the large supply of workers has put off people from taking advantage of whatever training might have been available.
A lot of the NHS has been largely supported by importing talented people while simultaneously gutting funding for medical qualifications, for example. This is not sustainable, but the ease of turning on the tap of skilled immigrants over the last few decades has allowed successive government to pretend that this wasn’t a problem.
Immigrants on visas that are tied to their employment are also much easier to exploit than native workers who can change jobs more easily, which depresses wages for everyone.
I am still of the opinion that work visa sponsorship should be moved from companies to unions and professional bodies. If there is a skills shortage in a field, constricting the supply of immigrants would give these bodies leverage to get funding for additional training, apprenticeships, and so on. And if companies needed union approval to be able to hire immigrants then you’d eliminate the ‘working conditions are so bad that no one with options would accept them’ problem.
Foreign staff in the NHS is taking place since decades - all those common wealth nurses that have been trained and worked on the isle (stagering) ad what about GP's - 50% or more are born in anothe country and they are part of the "baby boom" and retiring - UK has not sen the bottom of this...
Yup, it’s been cheaper for decades to import doctors and nurses than properly fund universities to train them. And, suddenly, a load of them no longer want to come here because who would want to go to Brexit island? And now there’s a shortage domestically.
We saw something similar with Polish plumbers 20 years earlier. A lot came over when we had a big skills shortage, but then other places in Europe looked more attractive and so a huge number left.
Rich countries often treat immigrants as a source of exploitable labour and forget that people who are willing to move countries to get to you because it looks like there are better prospects are also often able to leave your country if somewhere else has better prospects (or if you decided to be a ‘hostile environment’ for them).
Yes, I'd agree (and boosted)
@ChrisMayLA6 except, there's no such thing as unskilled labour. All labour requires a level of skill.
That's a fair comment; I was using 'skilled' in its dominant way, but I would agree what we're really talking about is different sorts of skills (not least the difference between explicit & tacit skills)
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