Braverman seeks to limit ‘non-contributing’ migrants
BRITAIN has too many low-skilled migrant workers and very high numbers of international students, who often brought dependents with them, home secretary Suella Braverman said in an interview with the Sun on Sunday (2).
Braverman said prime minister Liz Truss’s government aimed to stick to a 2019 election pledge to lower net migration. She was speaking ahead of the Conservative party’s annual conference in Birmingham.
Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng said on September 23 that the government was looking to review immigration policy as part of an attempt to boost growth. It followed complaints from businesses that post-Brexit rules were too restrictive, especially for low-paid jobs.
However, Braverman said reducing migration was an aim shared by all of Truss’s ministers.
“What we’ve got is too many low-skilled workers coming to this country,” she said. “We have also got a very high number of students coming to this country and ... a really high number of dependents. Those people ... are not necessarily working or they are working in lowskilled jobs, and they are not contributing to growing our economy.”
Since January 2021, most workers must be paid at least £25,600 a year for an employer to sponsor a visa, causing problems for employers in sectors such as agriculture, hospitality and some manufacturing, where lower wages are common.
The numbers of EU workers have fallen, but this has been offset by an increase in the number of nonEU workers, especially from India. Net migration to Britain totalled 239,000 in the year to June 2021, according to the most recent figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Government figures show that there were 117,965 visas granted to Indian nationals in the year ending June 2022, an increase of 80,569 (+215 per cent) compared to 2019.
Indian nationals have overtaken the Chinese as the nationality with the highest number of sponsored study visas granted for the first time since the year ending June 2011.
Pakistani nationals also saw a large increase, rising by 377 per cent with 23,490 student visas granted across this period.
Chinese and Indian nationals together comprise almost half (48 per cent) of all sponsored study grants.
However, according to ministers, those coming on sponsored study visas bring relatively few dependants, with 83 per cent of the visas issued being to main applicants.
Braverman also said she wanted to restrict the ability of migrants to challenge deportation on the basis that they had been subjected to forced labour or human trafficking.