Post-Brexit five-year UK work visas planned – report The UK government is considering a five-year post-Brexit visa scheme that would allow more foreign employees – including those in the tech sector – to work in the UK, according to reports. Ministers are considering plans that would grant more multi-year visas to migrant workers in “key” sectors, The Sunday Times reported this …
Let's see how long that carries on going after things like borders start to become apparent. It seems the government still hasn't worked out that if the UK leaves the single market and customs union, Northern Ireland can't have a soft border with both Ireland and rUK as that would mean it would be possible for a company in NI to import from the EU tariff free and and pass on to rUK and the EU ain't going to allow that. Perhaps they should ask a few experts.
You mean there might now be smuggling across the Irish border - surely not ?
Ah, but the good old days smuggling occurred before there was a single market, and we had silly subsidies for exporting butter to another EU country. What was interesting ( a few years ago now) was to see how many petrol stations there were within about 20 miles of the border on the North (roughly zero) because fuel duty was massively lower in the south.
They'll need a Trump wall sadly.
Hhm... there are quite a few EU countries with better economies than the UK. On growth alone the UK finished 2016 as the 14th fastest growing economy meaning there are thirteen EU member states with higher economic growth. Overall the growth outlook for every EU country (yes, including Greece) is positive. As for other metrics, you can find EU countries that outperform us on competitiveness, unemployment, tax pressure, ease of doing business etc. etc.
The main challenge for anyone seeking better work in other parts of the EU will be the language. There are probably perhaps ten EU countries where you could easily find work while only speaking English.
I've been thinking about the language aspect. I suppose one of my next work study things will, rather than focus on cloud, security, blah blah etc, be a language, in the traditional sense rather than programming. I figure the likely work options (i.e. common choices for firms to relocate to from the UK) are Dublin, Paris, Amsterdam or a choice of German cities. Dublin I'll be fine obviously, and having worked in the Netherlands and seen the prevalence of English, I think the same applies in Amsterdam. Looking at French and German economies and industries, if I was a betting man I think that makes learning to speak German the best bet - anyone any thoughts?
> I've been thinking about the language aspect
The language aspect comes with the job and your social prospects.
I would just move somewhere that I like, or where I'm doing something I like, and then address whatever language needs there may be as they arise.
Speaking six languages in my day-to-day already, it might be easier for me to say this, but I wouldn't worry too much about language learning itself, rather about the wider social aspect, and that's something you can only pick up once you settle there.
I have, in part due to economy. But mainly because I'm married to a citizen of that country, my child is a citizen of that country, and I own a house there.
Since I've had the right to live and work here since before I was born, having this taken away* is a real PITA. Every institution pretty much shrugs and says "For two years it'll be the same, after that fuck knows".
So thanks to this BS I may well be forcibly separated from my family**, have no ability to plan for work or study after a two year horizon.
I also don't really want a third citizenship. It's annoying enough for tax with two, one being commonwealth.
*to some degree, to be decided when the brexiters get round to working out their plan in a realistic universe, and resolving that with the EU's universe. Which leaves me utterly re-assured.
** it's pretty likely that either Germany, Belgium or the Netherlands will let me become a resident, since I pay tax and don't break the law much, as there is quite strong political will towards keeping their brits
@druck: maybe you missed the Facts Of Life lesson as applied to migration:
Getting out of a country is easy. "Leaving the UK" is no problem. Likewise, leaving any other country.
The problem is that there has to exist another country that will let you in. And the UK has no power or authority to force them to do that. (At least, not any more. It used to have the authority to grant you automatic entry and rights in 27 other countries, but then some idiots voted to give that up, so here we are.)
Even Hitler was all for Jews leaving Germany. But after a short while, no other country would let them in, and so they were stuck.
Well, this is what the people voted for, this is what MUST be delivered. I, personally, am against the madness in the first place. I voted remain.
The current screams by various "interested parties" about "this will fail without the Eastern European slaves" are disingenuous. As my CS professor in high school in the days before political correctness used to say - you cannot have your penis in both hands and your soul in paradise at the same time.
If Leave means Leave, that is what it means. The ones who remain in this country (isn't this a wonderful word play), will have to contend with it.
" this is what the people voted for"
I do wish people would stop saying this, even in jest. The question was about leaving the EU. There was no vote at all about migration, immigration, human rights reform, trade policy, defence policy or taxation.
Implementing the referendum result would involve leaving the EU whilst maintaining the status quo in all other areas - free movement and free trade would stay, for example.
I didn't! FYI.
Wish this guy was our PM to sort you lot out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0eGaKCgW-M
Wonder if he'll get the 'Ronald Reagan Award'? But he's done a great service to The UK on many fronts, especially our relations with you lot over the pond and for our sovereignty, dignity, self-determination etc, as history as proved, careful who you mess with cos you might regret upsetting us/US.
@ Baldy50
I am not quite sure if I understand your comment or not, but that face and voice of that man I don't think I would use for anything else but a scarecrow. Poor birds. And if you are American he is indeed absolutely convinced he is the reason Trump is the president and he would indeed love to be part of his administration. Would Trump be that crazy I really don't know. You can have him as far as I am concerned while I am not British I am not surprised he has been unable to become a MP in Britain. Perhaps you could let him loose in Texas for a Brextex just for the fun of it.
>>Well, this is what the people voted for
They didn't vote for it in Scotland where 68% voted to remain. However, hardly anyone voted there for our current tory government either (remind me again how many Conservative MPs there are in the whole of Scotland? Answer - One). So hey ho.
And they wonder why some people might be in favour of Independence...
The government plan to keep immigration at current levels. How they square this with their manifesto commitments, I don't know. But they are not going to "shut the door" on those people until we've trained our own doctors and fruit pickers. They may, however, prevent these immigrants claiming benefits they don't currently claim. So that will be a win.
Erm, but the UK Government already has the power to restrict benefits to non-UK nationals if they wanted to, whilst remaining in the EU. Many EU countries already do that. The fact is the consecutive UK governments don't having an effing clue about most things, that's why this country is in such a sorry mess and taking the wrong remedies to try and solve them.
To be fair these people are migrants, come over live on the cheap and work hard for a few months and go home with what after exchange rates is a decent wad. Cutting them out will mean the slack is taken up by immigrants from outside the EU. Immigrants stay put.
> To be fair these people are migrants, come over live on the cheap and work hard for a few months and go home with what after exchange rates is a decent wad.
And to be fairer, it is not about the rather pitiful wages. It is about the experience of a paid working holiday (picking fruit can actually be good fun, judging by my flatmate's experience when I was a student), and about learning / practising a new language.
This is why you will find Brits picking grapes in France, and Germans in Spain, for example.
Tom 38
Quote:
Fruit picking, not that tricky. It continually amazes me that people won't move from areas with high unemployment in the UK to work picking spuds in Peterborough, but they will from Lithuania...
The reason is simple: Cost
Imagine you're a guy with young family living in say... I dunno Manchester for example
You think... I'm unemployed, but can go fruit picking in Norfolk.
So now you're working... but you lose a lot of the benefits you were being paid, plus the fact theres no way to commute from Manchester to Norfolk every day, so you have to rent a room somewhere.
But the time you've done that, you find you're £100/wk worse off than being unemployed.
And yes I have seen it happen with an unemployed friend who could'nt get a job because he'd lose so much money having to pay full rent on his place.
And finally, when people go "Lazy brits dont want to work, well , we'll make them" just replace the word 'brits' with the word 'jews' and see how much it sounds like a popular central european political party from the 1930's
On replacing the word "brits" with "jews"... Good point.
Perhaps also we could replace the word "migrants" or "foreigners" with "people".
Then when I next read about a family where the mother happened to have lived all her working life in the UK but was born in another EU country, and has been refused permanent residency, I can see how wrong it is for the government to turn UKIP poison into policy.
About a third of such applications for PR are being rejected, and this is causing huge anxiety for thousands of families up and down the country, their lives reduces to bargaining chips for Theresa May's stupid game of "gamble away the country".
I dread my own application:
Two semi British kids
17 years of PAYE and NI
Always wanted to become British (no, not for the F-ing Brexit reason) but never thought it would be under duress
And them some nasty penpusher will have control over my future because the wrong box was ticked or I used the wrong kind of ink.
"their lives reduces to bargaining chips"
Serial idiot John Redwood was on Daily Politics yesterday (iPlayer if anyone hates themselves enough) saying he doesn't understand anything at all and refuses to listen to people who do why the EU countries won't issue guarantees to UK citizens as Mrs "May has already said the UK will". Firstly "will", is future tense - not present - so why should the EU offer in advance of a formal UK commitment, when it's the UK making the change, not the EU? Secondly, what about EU citizens who live in and work in the UK now, who choose to go & visit family post-Brexit - will they definitely be allowed back to their jobs, their lives here, without any unnecessary issues? What about small companies that rely on cross-border business, are they going to get meaningful help, or is that only to be offered to people the size of Nissan, Crapita, and so on? [Capita and it's ilk are already being given more than enough subsidies by IR35 changes, maybe they'll be honourable and refuse any additional help? haha]
Until all of those questions are answered, and set in law, we do not know what is going to happen, and anyone who says "it will all be great or even just OK" seems as believable as the average political manifesto: they don't know what will happen. I don't know that our politicians will claim they have got a good deal simply because the Daily Fail says they did, just as I don't know that Mr Trump is blocking huge parts of the media from press conferences because he doesn't like being questioned: it's just a small suspicion.
Likewise, I don't buy the the idea that the country will fall apart without cheap Labour. As I see it, we have more than one type of Brexiter. Now this isn't exhaustive, but we do have:
- Tbe money: Will continue to benefit from all the cheap labour it wants.
- The poor and left behind: The newly minted cheap labour.
Then we have Reg readers who might not have voted leave, but will probably get bit richer from the IT fallout. This could be bigger than Y2K.
Or lots of people who CBA to work for the pittance on offer in many parts of the country.
.. Obviously there are some stupid job specs that cannot be met and so artificial lack of skills.
e.g. ask for n years experience of software that has only been available for n-2 years etc.
e.g. ask for so many recent new "flavour of teh month" things that, in the unlikely event you had used them all, with so many of teh and them being so new you could not honestly claim good level of expertise in them all.
Given that you can now be paid more in Bangalore or Mumbai than you can in parts of the country, how are we going to attract the skills we need from India now? (Although with the big consultancies moving jobs overseas as fast as they could over the last few years what has happened to the staff they no longer need?)
According to The Times, a minister said: “The simplest way is to have five-year visas. You’re welcome to come if you have a job where we need you, but you don’t get benefits and then you leave.”
I wonder why do I expect that holders of these visas would still be expected to pay full National Insurance contributions, but won't be able to claim any benefits or pensions?
The social contract seems to have been broken. If I pay NI I expect NHS, unemployment benefit, and pensions.
Paying NI for nothing, having conditions placed on staying (who knows, in a few years the Home Office could be breaking up your relationship or family), and working in a country where the knuckle draggers have a free pass and the government is happy to appease them isn't the kind of environment which attracts "exceptional talent".
the problem with the 5 years visa is a bit bigger than that I am going to be in retirement in the next few years, will I need a visas for my retirement,do I receive a UK pension as I paid for it even if it is getting worse and less or can I take all that money that I contributed to my country france if I can, by the way those visas is another stealth tax no more no less
If there are no benefits paid, does that mean employers and employees won't have to pay national insurance contributions?
And if benefits were based on how long you have worked in the UK, would that only apply to foreigners, or to the huge number lazy Brits who have successfully avoided any work for years as well?
Whatever your stance on Brexit I think everyone can agree that immigration needs to be sorted.
If you have 278k people entering the country every year then as we now see infrastructure can't cope without massive investment which the government is not going to do.
An example of this is the creation of 1650 near where I live. They are building a shopping parade with the "possibility" of a doctors or a pharmacy. No word on schools, no work on transport though where they are building them is avoided like the plague at rush hour by me.
The problem with the EU is that once you are in one country you can go to any other, so if a country decides to take a million refugees and they want to be in the UK they only have to wait to become citizens then move.
I actually think this is a sensible approach.
Net immigration is ~300k.
Net immigration is not a very informative number by itself. A more useful metric is net immigration per 1000 population per year. Let's see how the UK is doing on this metric (using mostly 2015 figures from
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migration_rate):
UK: 2.54
Spain: 8.31
Australia: 5. 65
Canada: 5.66
Sweeden: 5.42
Switzerland: 4.74
Italy: 4.10
Ireland: 4.09
US: 3.86
Russia: 1.69
France: 1.09
Germany: 1.24
Greece: 2.32
South Korea: 2.60
It therefore appears that the UK net migration levels are broadly in line with other reasonably prosperous countries. If anything, they are on the low side among anglophone countries. For example, Canada's net migration rate is over twice the UK's - and they considering increasing it further. It does not seem to cause a crisis in Canadian health care, education, or housing; rather the overall economic and social effect of high immigration is clearly positive for Canada. One might be tempted to think that the difference is in the much higher population density; however, South Korea is much more densely populated, but does not seem to consider net migration level identical to UK's as a problem.
This all makes me suspect that the "immigration crisis" in the UK is largely a manufactured problem.
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