Based on JRF’s usual high quality research we are told how some employers set-out to exploit vulnerable migrant workers. Often this is done through the creation of debt bondage. Gangmasters’ demanding fees for providing work, none payment of wages, unlawful deductions from wages or deliberately with-holding work whilst providing loans. All is done to build a total dependency of the employee on the employer. This compliance through the use of debt bondage is frequently backed up by physical and mental abuse. In addition, accommodation is also provided by the employer which means loss of job also means no-where to live!

The picture painted by the report is I would repeat all too familiar. Where other research has been carried-out focusing on low paid A8 workers, frequently employed through agencies, similar tales of abuse have been unearthed. This abuse is found across many sectors of the economy and is on-going. Without repeating all of the reports sound policy recommendations, I would highlight just one.

‘Continued government support for the Gangmasters Licencing Authority and possible strengthening of its powers’

This strengthening of powers must include a broadening of the GLA’s remit to intervene in all sectors of the economy. The JRF report makes it clear that this terrible exploitation takes part in sectors of the economy in which the GLA can intervene (food processing) and in sectors where it cannot (restaurants). The last government responded to calls for a broadening of the GLA’s remit by saying we don’t have the evidence that exploitation is going on in other sectors of the economy. How much more
evidence does a British government need to act?

Finally, there is a current discussion over the perceived preference of some employers for employing migrant or mobile workers from central and eastern Europe. For some employers there is a genuine preference and is based on an intention to exploit!

You do not have to just surmise that ODWs are vulnerable; there is evidence which emphatically confirms their vulnerability in shocking terms. In 2011 Kalayaan, an organisation which provides advice, advocacy and support services to ODWs, carried out research amongst it’s members. This research found 54% had experienced psychological abuse, 18% physical abuse and 7% sexual abuse. In addition 76% were not allowed a day off, 53% worked a 16 hour day and 60% received under £50 per week. Listening to the stories of some of these women is both gut wrenching and fills you with rage. Women far from their families and the communities they know, isolated in an house which many are forbidden to leave, subject to daily abuse and threatened with being thrown into the street should they complain.

The sheer vulnerability of these workers led to an important concession in 1998 when the then Labour government, with cross party support, agreed that these workers were not to be tied to an individual employer but could leave an abusive workplace and find similar work elsewhere. It provided them with an important escape route which some 23 years later the present government intends to close down.

The Government has announced that it intends to end the Overseas Domestic Workers visa and replace it with an much more restrictive scheme which will limit such workers to those employed by migrants who are in the UK on a visitors permit which is valid for no more than six months – ODWs will therefore also be limited to six month stays. Vitally their right to change employer will be removed. The logic of the Government seems to be, okay maybe they will be abused but it will now only be for six months on UK soil! In what other circumstances are we told that abuse and downright criminal action is acceptable as long as it only goes on for six months?

The Government may object that by way of recompense they intend to strengthen the ‘pre-entry measures to ensure that domestic workers and their employers understand their respective rights and responsibilities’. Including agreed written terms of employment. It would be a more powerful argument if the UK Government was not one of only nine governments in the world who failed to adopt the new ILO convention 189 on Domestic Workers. A convention which is aimed at addressing the particular problems that domestic workers face and ensure an inspection regime is in place to help enforce these rights.

The TUC would urge the Government to think again on Overseas Domestic Workers and while they are at it, also look at Convention 189. Or are they purely concerned with the wishes of those upstairs?

The Government’s commitment to bringing net migration down to the tens of thousands by 2015, from the current figure of around 250,000, is increasingly looking forlorn. With no control over EU worker mobility or indeed emigration, the Government has launched a number of assaults on non-EU migration which will prove very damaging to the UK economy. For example, an arbitrary cap has been set on skilled migrants under Tier 2. Rather than economic need determining migration it is being set by the political interests of the current Government.

The recently released figures from the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) shows that whilst last year’s cap for Tier 2 was set at 21,700, the migrants entering the UK via this route could be as low as 10,000. Should we draw the conclusion that the cap has not artificially driven down the numbers of such migrants? Perhaps this slump is purely due to the stagnating economy? An alternative interpretation is coming from the business community who are saying constant change in the immigration regulations is putting off employers, whilst would be migrants to the UK are being turned-off by what they see as an anti-migrant message.

At the very same time the Government has allowed Intra Company Transfers to grow markedly without check. Intra Company Transfers (ICT) allows employers to move existing employees from their plants/offices outside the UK into the UK for a limited period of time. As a concept the TUC does not have a problem with ICTs. At times such transfers are clearly desirable and in the interests of the workforce as a whole e.g. in the transference of knowledge. The MAC’s figures however show that ICTs have grown significantly from around 20,000 in 2009 to 30,000 by mid 2011 and per capita are substantially higher than those in comparative countries like the USA, Japan and Germany.

Moreover, experience from the workplace suggests that in many cases ICTs are being used without any demonstrable economic need. This is not surprising given that employers bringing in staff via the ICT route do not have to pass the resident labour market test; they simply do not have to demonstrate that there is no one in the UK resident labour market that could do the job.

The Government is pursuing an immigration policy which delivers the worst of all possible worlds, one that excludes skilled workers we need whilst allowing in skilled workers we don’t. It is time for a radical rethink of immigration policy. We need an immigration policy which places economic growth at its very heart. One which makes the UK attractive to the very migrants we desperately need.

344,000 people left the UK in the year to September 2010, down 20% from its peak of 427,000 in the 12 months to December 2008,

By contrast the number of migrants coming in to the UK has remained broadly constant at 586,000, taking net migration to 242,000, up from 198,000 at the end of 2009 and 163,000 the year before.

Within these figures it is significant that the number of migrants coming to the UK from the eight accession countries which joined the European Union in 2004 (including Poland) also rose significantly, up 72,000 in the 12 months to September last year from 45,000 in 2009.With a fall in A8 nationals leaving the UK over the same period from 57,000 to 29,000. Accordingly the net flow of A8 nationals switched from 12,000 leaving the UK to 43,000 arriving and is now at the same level seen in the year ending September 2008.Again the significance of these figures is that the Government has no control over the movement of A8 nationals in and out of the UK.

The Government’s policy of reducing net migration to the tens of thousands seems less achievable than ever. Do they try do bear down on the figures through imposing even more draconian measures on non-EU migration causing further damage to the economy or do they quietly drop the policy? We can only hope they take the second option!

All things being equal. Tier 1 and 2 migration clearly has a positive impact on (GDP). In a straightforward static analysis, Tier 1 and 2 migration makes a small but positive contribution to GDP per head. Such effects will accumulate over time and become more significant. (Source: MAC Report)

Not only is the cap on Tier 1 and 2  proving ineffective to meet the Government’s objective, it would seem that the TUC’s assessment that such an arbitrary cap will damage the economy is well founded!

Having done damage in one area the Government’s politically motivated drive to reduce net migration is now focusing on foreign students who make up some 60% of all non-EU migrants to the UK. Given the severe cuts they are making in Higher Education funding and the associated proposed tripling of student tuition fees, they know they have to tread carefully. The UK Council for International Student Affairs (UKCISA) recently estimated that Universities earned £2.5 billion from foreign students in fees alone, during the preceding year. For the majority of universities these fees represented between 10% and 30% of their total income. Billions are also spent by foreign students in the local economy. A 2007 British Council report estimated that the total value to of overseas students to the UK economy was £8.5 billion – a figure which included private sector colleges.

The Government is however generally shying away from the University sector and talking about targeting sub-degree foreign students of whom 131,000 were approved to study in the UK in 2009. They are particularly fond of talking about bearing down on bogus colleges! Their actions are however driven not by wishing to eradicate abuse but by arbitrarily cutting migration figures to meet their political goal. Such arbitrary interventions in this sector as with Tier 1 and 2 will not be without cost. Along with the real loss of driving away foreign students and with them income from legitimate colleges, the universities will not remain untouched. It is estimated that 50% of foreign undergraduate students have previously studied in the UK on sub-degree courses. It should be fairly obvious that sub-degree courses offer a valuable feeder stream for degree courses

Today’s Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) press release puts it aptly:

Foreign students contribute a huge amount to the UK education sector and to the wider economy. It is right to clamp down on abuse of the visa system but these proposals are driven primarily by the Government’s objective of reducing net migration by more than half. In its efforts to meet this objective, the Government risks causing significant harm to a highly-successful export sector at a time when the economy is still vulnerable.

The Government’s objective of reducing net migration is not only becoming more elusive, the pursuit of it is becoming more damaging.

The attempt to cap immigration is one of the few direct tools available to the Government in trying to achieve their goal. Whilst their immediate attention has been to cap economic migration via Tiers 1&2 of the Points Based System (PBS) it has soon become clear that capping economic migration will not deliver the reductions they are looking for – in total it only accounts for 20% of non-EU migration. The Government’s announcement last Tuesday made it clear they would also be looking to reduce other areas of migration including students and family reunions.‪ ‪

The Government’s problem with capping economic migration has however not been confined to the fact that by itself it can not deliver the numbers. Imposing an arbitrary cap on economic migration has been criticised by business and indeed from those inside Government, notably Vince Cable, who have argued that it will ultimately damage the UK economy. The TUC has largely agreed, arguing that economic need should determine economic immigration and not some anti-migrant bias. The only area that the TUC has fundamentally disagreed with business over is Intra Company Transfers: long a source of abuse of the migration system with overseas workers taking jobs that could be done by those already in the resident labour market. It’s therefore a bitter irony that the Government now intend to go ahead with the cap but give a relatively privileged position to those coming via the Intra Company Transfer route.

In bare bones the Government intends to do the following:‪

• Impose a limit of 21,700 across Tiers 1 & 2
• Limit of 20,700 under Tier 2 and raising the bar to graduate level jobs so that only the most skilled can come
• Intra Company Transfers will be exempt but will raise standards and lower numbers by placing a new salary threshold of £40,000 for ICTs longer than 12 months (clearly saying they are exempt but saying they will cut them is a contradiction but reflects the contradictory statements the Prime Minister has made to different audiences)
• Close the Tier 1 General Route: those coming to UK looking for work who have not got a job on arrival
• Overall cut of 20% in line with the Migration Advisory Committee report

This will however make it even more important for them to make reductions in the overseas student numbers and family reunions (accounting for 60% and 20% of immigration respectively). Reductions in these areas will also pose their problems. Given the Government’s onslaught on university finances, universities will be desperate to attract overseas students and the finance they bring with them. Attacking overseas students in areas like those attending language courses also has its problems. Genuine language colleges are a welcome source of revenue but also some 30% of all those overseas students recruited to graduate courses are recruited in the UK, of those very same language courses. The other area, family reunions, also has its difficulties (even putting aside moral considerations) not least that for the UK to further restrict this area will probably lead them into clashes with international law.