October 25, 2010
At just the time that the government is calling on the private sector to create jobs, they are negotiating in secret an agreement between the EU and India that would allow an unlimited number of Indian specialists to do work in Britain that has not been first offered to British workers. This could well blast a hole in Britain's immigration controls - that is the conclusion of a paper issued today by Migrationwatch.
The EU/India Free Trade Agreement due to be signed in December will permit Indian corporations to transfer specialist staff to EU countries, notably the UK, without any upper limit on numbers.
This has potentially serious implications for Britain:
This Agreement could, of course, present very serious problems in implementing a cap on economic migration to which the coalition government are committed. The concessions under it would have to be operated outside any cap or the level of the cap would have to be adjusted to allow for demand for Intra Company Transfer visas from India. There may be scope for a minimum salary but such conditions are notoriously hard to enforce.
Commenting, Sir Andrew Green Chairman of Migrationwatch said, ‘It is time the government came clean about what is in this agreement. It looks as though the Indians are about to drive a bullock and cart through Britain's immigration system despite government talk about creating jobs in the private sector. There is no point in a limit on economic migration if specialists from India are excluded from the cap by a separate agreement. British IT workers are already suffering the impact on jobs of tens of thousands of Indian IT staff working in Britain; we already have 48,000 unemployed British IT specialists.’