An Irish Times piece on Bernadette McAliskey criticising the British government’s new points-based immigration system
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| By Freya McClements |
There will be a “whitening” of immigration into the UK as a result of the country’s points-based application system, the activist and campaigner Bernadette McAliskey has warned.
“The poorer southern hemisphere economies [will] support a smaller percentage of individuals meeting the various thresholds than the European countries with which they are now competing,” she told The Irish Times.
She also said the new measures could also encourage EU nationals and firms to leave Northern Ireland and move across the Border to the Republic.
The economy of Northern Ireland cannot survive without immigrant labour, and this points system will make it extremely difficult.
So where will industry go? The problem for us in the North, sitting here in this town [Dungannon, Co Tyrone], is that if you want to have freedom of movement and be able to do your job you might as well move back to the European Union. You don’t have far to go.
To be able to keep a pool of labour that is legally recruited … why would industry not follow you?
The UK government announced on Wednesday that a points-based immigration system which will apply to both EU and non-EU citizens will come into force from January 1st, 2021.
EU, EEA and Swiss citizens living in the UK from before December 30th, 2020, must apply to the UK’s EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS) to continue to remain after June 30th, 2021.
Under Common Travel Area rules, Irish citizens will continue to be able to live and work in the UK as they do now.
Continue reading @ The Irish Times.
“... introduce an immigration system that makes it increasingly difficult for people to come and live and work here...”
ReplyDeletePity we can’t all have non-jobs that depend on, and thus are incentivised to increase, this type of worker flow. Unfortunately the rest of us have to compete with these people in the jobs market. An out working of restricting migrant numbers should be that industry will simply have to train the available workers to do the type of roles she imagines we are unable to do presently, and in tandem incentivise the pay levels for those jobs we are supposedly unwilling to do.
Government should disincentivize the outsourcing of production to other jurisdictions, which is a vastly exaggerated dynamic anyway. Take for example a managerial class that have family ties, kids schools and social activities rooted in their current locale, they are not ambivalent to moving/losing everything to assist in issues of recruitment. The risk of replacing such people is a major anchor for company owners. Ironically for Bernadette, the type of people that facilitate this labour and capital flow, that effectively seeks to hold communities to ransom under the threat of leaving, are the transient international workers demographic that have no deep links to an area, and thus will relocate more easily.
I’m not trying to bitch about Bernadette too much though, her concern for helping companies profit at the expense of the local community seems genuine. Jesus, what happened to her, she has had a bigger decline in output quality from the 60’s/70’s than Paul McCartney.