Smith pledged to use the flexibility built into the points-based system to respond to changing economic circumstances, in turn helping British workers through the hard times of the recession.
The Government has already suspended Tier 3 of the points-based system to ensure no foreign national from outside the European Economic Area (EEA) can come to the United Kingdom and work in a low-skilled job.
The Home Secretary has announced three significant changes to support British workers, and to be more selective about the migrants coming to the United Kingdom from outside the EEA. From 1 April, the Government will:
- strengthen the resident labour market test for Tier 2 skilled jobs so that employers must advertise jobs to resident workers through JobCentre Plus before they can bring in a worker from outside Europe
- use each shortage occupation list to trigger skills reviews that focus on upskilling resident workers for these occupations, which will make the United Kingdom less dependent on migration for the future
- tighten new criteria against which highly-skilled migrants seeking entry to the United Kingdom are judged, by raising the qualifications and salary required for Tier 1 (General) of the points-based system to a Master’s degree and a minimum salary of GB pound 20,000
Migration Advisory Committee assessment
The Home Secretary has also asked the independent Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), chaired by Professor David Metcalf, to report on:
- whether or not there’s an economic case for restricting Tier 2 (skilled workers) to shortage occupations only
- his assessment of the economic contribution made by the dependants of points-based system migrants and their role in the labour market
- what further changes there should be to the criteria for Tier 1 in 2010-2011, given the changing economic circumstances
Speaking to the media, Jacqui Smith explained: “All workers now coming to the UK from outside Europe have to meet the requirements of the Australian-style points system, which allows us to raise or lower the bar on who can come here.”
Smith continued: “We have always said it’s important to be selective about who comes here to work, and we have already put a stop to low-skilled labour entering the UK from outside Europe. Just as in a growth period we needed migrants to support growth, by the same equation it’s right in a downturn to be more selective about the skills levels of those migrants, and to do more to put British workers first.”
The Home Secretary opined: “These measures are not about narrow protectionism. A flexible immigration system, rather than an arbitrary cap, is better for British business and the British economy. We recognise that migration continues to play an important role in the UK, at the same time as we are giving greater support to domestic workers so that we can all come through the recession stronger.”
“Given the economic circumstances and the action we are taking to be more selective, I expect the number of migrants coming to the UK from outside the EEA to fall during the next financial year.”
Ten further immigration milestones
By being more selective, as well as through tough enforcement measures to tackle illegal immigration, the Home Secretary has tasked the UK Border Agency with delivering this reduction.
The beleaguered minister has also set out ten further immigration milestones for the UK Border Agency to meet this year. The ten milestones in the UK Border Agency’s Delivery Plan are as follows:
- March: open a new immigration removal centre to help remove immigration offenders
- April: use the points system to ensure migration matches the country’s needs in hard times
- April: start charging migrants to create a multimillion pound fund that will reduce the impacts of migration on local services
- April: introduce new technology to help detect drugs and other illegal goods
- May: be tougher on European criminals, removing European nationals who cause harm to our communities
- July: start tough new visa controls, which will cover five countries
- August: have completed delivery of new facial recognition technology in ten major air terminals, giving British passengers a faster, secure route through the border
- November: issue 75,000 compulsory identity cards to foreign nationals
- December: hit target to screen 120 million passengers entering and leaving the UK against security ‘watch lists’ and introduce a new high-tech Security Centre
- December: deport a record number of foreign prisoners
Screening 120 million passengers: e-borders in practice
This is part of e-Borders, enabling the UK Border Agency to check people (eg through advance passenger information from carriers) before they reach the UK.
“The Government isn’t interested in where people go for their holidays,” claims an official statement, “but is determined to identify people who pose a threat to our security, stopping known criminals and turning back illegal immigrants.”
e-borders will also enable the authorities to count people in and out of the country. Passport readers and iris scanners allow officers to confirm the identity of people arriving in the UK, speed up travel for legitimate travellers and release officers to target high risk routes.
The new hi-tech National Border Targeting Centre for e-Borders will be based in Manchester, and by the end of 2010 staff there will monitor the vast majority of British and EU passengers and almost every foreign passenger travelling in and out of Britain. The new centre will create up to 250 jobs for the north west of England – joining the 25,000 staff working across the UK Border Agency across 135 countries.
To protect the law-abiding majority, the Government states that it has designed e-borders to have the highest standards of data protection. Access to personal data is strictly controlled, and only used for law enforcement purposes. The database will be held at a secure location in the UK. For security reasons, its location cannot be disclosed.
e-Borders will screen 60% of all passenger and crew movements in and out of the UK by the end of December 2009 against the previously mentioned watch lists, rising to 95% by December 2010 and 100% by March 2014. Already the GB pound 1.2 billion e-Borders system has screened over 78 million passengers travelling to Britain, leading to more than 2,700 arrests for crimes including murder, drug dealing and sex offences.
Building on UK Border Agency work to date
These ten pledges are designed to build on the work already undertaken by the UK Border Agency to strengthen the country’s immigration controls. The measures include:
- fingerprint visas that lock people to one identity – with 3.5 million sets of fingerprints taken since their rollout, identifying 5,200 cases of identity swaps
- a high-tech electronic borders system which checks people against watch lists and will cover even more passenger journeys by the end of this year
- customs checks which, since April 2008, saw technology at ports contribute to the seizure of over GB pound 260 million worth of illegal drugs
For passengers legitimately travelling through United Kingdom ports, new facial recognition technology is being introduced which balances high security with quicker times at immigration control.
For illegal immigrants not playing by the rules, the UK Border Agency will open – in just a few weeks’ time, in fact – a new immigration removal centre with the capacity to hold more than 420 people near Gatwick Airport, helping deliver the Government’s pledge to remove even more foreign national prisoners this year than ever before. In 2008, over 5,000 foreign national prisoners were removed from the UK.
Plans for reducing the threshold
The Government also pledged to clamp down harder on criminals from Europe by reducing the threshold for consideration of their cases for deportation from 24 months in jail to just 12 when they have committed drugs-related, violent or sexual offences, putting them in line with non-EEA nationals.
Plans will also be introduced to target and deport low-level persistent foreign offenders who cause harm in the communities but who have not been given a prison sentence (for example, those on community service but who over a period have continued to re-offend).
In March 2006, the Government published a Command Paper setting out the new points-based system which consolidates the many complex routes into just five tiers. Tier 1, for highly skilled migrants, was introduced in February last year and Tier 5 (for temporary workers and youth mobility) last November. The student tier of the system – Tier 4 – will be launched at the end of March.
Tier 3, which covers low-skilled routes, is suspended and will only be used if specific shortages are identified that cannot be filled from either the UK’s domestic or European labour force.
New visa requirements for visiting nationals
Only this month, the Government announced it would be introducing brand new visa requirements on visiting nationals from five new countries travelling to the UK. These new visa checks will all be introduced by the middle of the year.
The facial recognition gates mentioned earlier use scanning equipment to compare the faces of UK and EEA passengers to their biometric passports. They provide high security with quicker times at immigration control.
The UK Border Agency has been successfully trialling facial recognition gates at both Manchester and Stansted Airports. The barrier checks the authenticity of the document and the eligibility of the passenger to enter the UK. If these checks are OK the passenger passes through the first set of gates.
The gates undertake checks against security watch lists in the same way as the current manual control. They check the passports for evidence of tampering, and compare the person presenting themselves against the photograph recorded on the chip of their passport.
UK border force officer monitoring
In addition, a UK border force officer will view the whole process on a monitoring station and intervene if they have any suspicions. The supervising border officer will also stop a random proportion of passengers for an extra manual check.
The Manchester trial of the gates is being evaluated by a team of officials and biometrics experts. The UK Border Agency is satisfied that the barriers are safe, efficient and allow the Government to direct its resources to the risk. Apparently, staff find the barrier systems easy to monitor and control.
New locations for the systems are still to be decided, but it’s likely the gates will be introduced at terminals which see the larger proportion of British and EEA nationals crossing the border in comparison to non-EEA nationals.
Detection of drugs and other illegal goods
The use of high technology systems at UK ports has already contributed to the seizing of over GB pound 260 million worth of illegal drugs, nearly 5,000 dangerous weapons and in excess of 800 million cigarettes.
Fourteen mobile freight scanners are currently in service, operating out of key sites such as Dover, Southampton, Felixstowe, Coquelles and around 50 other sites in the UK.
The UK Border Agency also uses dog teams, carbon dioxide detectors, heartbeat monitors and other types of scanners to detect people, money and drugs. There will be two new scanners at Dover and Coquelles, as well as upgrades and replacement scanners at Southampton and Felixstowe as well as other ports.
A year since the UK Border Agency began issuing fines to employers for hiring illegal workers, it’s now launching a second advertising campaign to promote the tough message that employers face a fine of up to GB pound 10,000 per illegal worker they employ.
The campaign adverts will run in the national press from 27 February. Since the Civil Penalty regime was introduced on 29 February last year, the UK Border Agency has issued over 1,000 fines worth over GB pound 10 million to employers who hire illegal workers.