Immigration newsletter 17 Feb 2011

The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) has recommended reducing the number of occupations that are eligible for migration under Tier 2 of the points based immigration system.

The UK Coalition Government has been taking steps to reduce levels of immigration into the UK. So it is likely that these recommendations will be accepted in whole or in part. The temporary immigration cap was put into place on 19 July 2010. The permanent immigration cap which will start in April 2011 will allow 20,700 visas under the Tier 2 (General) visa category. For Tier 2, only applicants of 'graduate level' will qualify.

The Tier 1 Visa highly skilled category will in effect end in April 2011.

The UK Border Agency (UKBA) has announced that their visa application centres in Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt have been closed temporarily due to the ongoing security situation.

This also affects some visa applications for people located in Sudan and Yemen as applications for certain types of visa applications for nationals of these two countries are processed in Cairo.

The BBC reports that the UK's National Health Service (NHS) is recruiting junior doctors from India in an attempt to head off a shortage caused by tighter immigration rules brought in over the last few years. 

"We pulled the plug on overseas recruitment far too quickly," said Professor Derek Gallen, postgraduate dean of medical training for Wales.

"[We didn't] realise what the implications of that action would be two, three or four years down the line," he added.

Ignacio Galan, the chief executive officer of Iberdrola SA, which owns Scottish Power Ltd has said recently that UK plans to develop renewable energy and improve power-generation and transmission systems will be serious affected by the shortage of engineers. Galan said that 80 percent of Scottish Power’s engineers are likely to retire in the next 15 years.

Vince Cable the UK Business Secretary in the UK Coalition Government has also raised the issue of shortages of engineers in the UK. 

Vince Cable said the following in a speech at the Liberal Democrat Party Conference in September 2010:

"Businesses cannot grow because of a shortage of trained workers while our schools churn out young people regarded by companies as virtually unemployable. The pool of unemployed graduates is growing while there is a chronic shortage of science graduates and especially engineers."

There have been concerns in recent months in some parts of the UK about the shortage of workers for manufacturing industry jobs.  In the North East of England engineering, process and manufacturing companies are having difficulty finding suitable workers. 

In the UK as a whole the manufacturing sector grew by 4 percent in the 12 months leading to June 2010, twice the growth rate of the financial sector during the same period. In the North East in August 2010 alone over 500 manufacturing jobs remained unfilled.