Commission releases new reports on migration and the economy
Immigration has been largely beneficial to the UK’s economy and has had little, or no, negative impact on the labour market, according to a major report released by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The report shows that nearly 3.7 million non-British nationals entered the UK between 1997 and 2006 and that 1.5 British nationals emigrated.
The Commission’s new research shows that nearly 3.7 million non-British nationals entered the UK between 1997 and 2006 and that the number of British nationals emigrating in that period amounted to 1.5m. Net immigration of non-British nationals therefore stood at around 2.2m.
The Commission argues that immigration has an overall benefit to the economy. Many British companies, such as those in the agricultural sector, would not be able to survive without low-skilled migrant labour, while highly skilled migrants are wealth creators. Similarly, foreign students help universities subsidise British students.
The research also concludes that immigration in the UK has had a minimal impact on both jobs and wages. The evidence shows that by and large immigrants do not displace native workers. In many cases they take up roles that would go otherwise unfilled and have a minor impact on wages (either positive or negative) for those carrying out the lowest paid jobs.
The Commission is proposing a package of measures to ensure that British workers get the skills they need to compete for jobs and that immigration policy complements efforts to rebuild and re-skill. This includes backing recent changes aimed at ensuring employers demonstrate that they have exhausted all possibilities for finding British workers to fill a role before they are allowed to bring in a migrant worker from outside the EU.
View the report at: https://www.thehrdirector.com/manager/www.equalityhumanrights.com/migration
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