Why Sajid Javid wants to relax immigration controls

Sajid Javid is due to announce the changes tomorrow

Home Secretary Sajid Javid is to announce that the UK will relax
its immigration controls and let in thousands more workers from
outside the EU in the run-up to Brexit.

Foreign doctors and nurses are expected to be excluded from the
Government’s “Tier 2” visa cap, which sets the limit for
all non-EU skilled workers at 20,700 people a year.

The move would help the NHS fill more vacancies, as well as
freeing up an estimated 8,000 visas that could be used to recruit
skilled migrants to work in industries such as IT, engineering and
teaching.

The first review in five years of the professions that qualify
for the visas will also be announced by Javid tomorrow.

The planned changes are certain to spark controversy.
As Politico’s Jack Blanchard notes: “Almost
surreally, the Government remains committed to cutting net
migration to below 100,000 people a year – meaning this plan flies
in the face of official Whitehall policy.”

How long has the current cap been in place?

The Tier 2 visa cap was introduced by then-home secretary
Theresa May in 2011.

Since then, the now Prime Minister has “resisted numerous calls
to relax the system”, says The Times. Indeed, “this is the first time
immigration policy has been significantly softened since May became
home secretary in 2010”, says Migration Watch chairman Lord
Green.

According to The Daily Telegraph, the PM was persuaded to
back a “time-limited” exemption for doctors and nurses after a
series of Cabinet ministers wrote to her voicing their support for
the plan.

Why the change?

Javid hinted at changes to the visa regime earlier this month,
telling the BBC’s The
Andrew Marr Show that he “saw the problem” with the current cap
and would take a “fresh look” at it.

NHS bosses have repeatedly said that the rules make it difficult
to recruit enough people to work in the health service, which as of
this February, had 35,000 vacancies for nurses and nearly 10,000
for doctors.

The move will also boost industries such as emerging technology,
which have been held back by high barriers to recruitment as a
result of the cap.

The caps on migration have done little to boost the Government’s
popularity with the wider public either. A cabinet source told
City A.M.: “By having a target that is so
unachievable and so unobtainable, you actually harm public
confidence – that target has never been hit, and is never going to
be hit without significant harm to economy.

“If it was originally meant to show the Government being tough
on migration, the fact they haven’t hit it isn’t very good.”

Tory backbencher Heidi Allen told BBC
Radio 4’s Today programme that she welcomed the decision. “It’s
absolutely brilliant… the immigration debate has been distorted,”
she said.

Allen had previously warned that the Tier 2 policy was “forcing
the country to make a binary choice between professionals needed to
grow the economy and professionals needed to staff our health
system”.

But Migration Watch’s Lord Green said while it “may be
necessary, at least temporarily to cope with the prospect of
Brexit, in the longer term the answer has to be to train our own
medics and not take them from countries that need them far more
than we do”.