Happy 2016 and welcome back! We hope you had a pleasant break over the December holidays! While we were all away either taking a breather, or catching up on work that doesn’t manage to fit into our weekly schedules, the House of Lords were busy holding its second reading of the immigration bill, just before Christmas on December 22.
Rightfully, concerns were raised as to whether imposing restrictions would mean that talented individuals would not find it easy to work within the UK, as suggested in the current proposed laws. There was particular concern regarding couples married with non-UK citizens, and the timely and costly process they have to undertake to live in the UK. Even today in London’s Metro article, War hero: British visa rules tearing my family apart, a British War veteran who served in Afghanistan spoke of how he has been separated from his wife and daughter because his current job pays less than ‘required to allow a foreign spouse to settle in Britain’. These laws will negatively impact individuals who not only fight for their country, but also academics who help build it.
The UK must realise that we live and work in an international world now, and such strict protectionist ideologies are anachronistic. The question to how much talent we will lose in the coming years, and how this will impact both our position in the knowledge economy as well as our attractiveness to investors, is an crucial one. The cookie-cutter mentality towards a policy concerning internationalisation contradicts the very diversity that expanding global is supposed to provide. This move, alongside the coming 2017 Referendum and other seemingly isolating policies, should warrant further inquiry into what direction the UK intends progress towards after cutting itself off from global labour and capital.