Barney Cotton, assistant editor for Business Leader Magazine spoke to Karen Kaur, Migrate UK’s senior immigration consultant:
‘Boris Johnson is a Prime Minister who knows that ‘playing the numbers game’ is not going to cut immigration levels as has been the Conservative manifesto since 2010 whilst Theresa May was still Home Secretary. Maybe that is why May became Prime Minister as there was the hope that migration levels will be reduced but Boris has learnt from this. Although migration from EU member states has dwindled, the rest of the world is still open for business and continues to compete for a place in the UK market.’
‘Although Boris doesn’t commit to reducing immigration levels, he does propose to put in place a stringent points-based system like Australia, which will see an elitist immigration system which takes into consideration a migrant’s level of skill, education, age and English language proficiency thus, side-lining the lower skilled migrants.’
‘However, the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) is proposing to drop the skill level to RQF level 3 so Boris’s request to the MAC to focus on an Australian points-based system to ‘control’ migration as oppose to ‘lowering’ it, may well be taken into consideration but without his desired result.’
‘It would be much better to see the quota system abolished alongside lowering of skill levels as MAC proposes, as there is a need for both highly skilled migrants and those that work in key manual and seasonal roles. Boris’s assertion that the migrant’s professional and personal skill levels be taken into account, will no doubt be a welcomed viewpoint on the way in which migration should be handled but his blasé approach with failing to comment on the cut to immigration levels has swung in his favour. He hasn’t promised to cut migration, but he has shown the intention to curb it.’