“Investing in training and development leads to the most significant return on investment a company can have.” - J.P. George
Anti-immigration rhetoric is one of the great rallying cries of the political right. We only have to look at the obsessive way the Tory Party has put illegal boat crossings at the head of its political agenda over the last decade to realise this.
The Tory party, the Reform UK party, and many far-right fringe groups have been spewing out anti-immigrant diatribe for as long as I can remember. Whipping up anti-immigrant feelings is very easy. The immigrant is the "other" and by definition not one of "us". It is they who take our jobs, our houses and overburden our public services. Up to a point, all of these things are true but is it the fault of the immigrant?
For years the right wing press and the Tory Party have directed our attention towards illegal migration but illegal migrants are not the real issue. It is LEGAL immigrants that make up the vast majority of those entering our country and many of these are invited here by big business.
Net migration hit a record 906,000 people for the year ending June 2023. Of these 52,530 were illegal immigrants, a mere 5.7% of the total immigrant population.
Overseas students are counted as immigrants, and for year ending June 2023, 326,000 were resident on study-related visas. Why foreign students are counted as immigrants is a little mystifying as the vast majority go back to their home countries after completing their studies, but if we take this figure away from the 906,000 we are left with 580,000. If we take away the illegal immigrants numbers form this figure we arrive at a total LEGAL immigrant figure of 527,470.
In other words, over half a million immigrants a year are allowed into Britain and many of these are invited here by big business. The excuse business uses for this mass recruitment abroad is that the British people do not have the skills they are looking for. The question then arises as to why British people lack relevant skills.
Professor Brain Bell, the chair of UK’s Migration Advisory Body, states:
“In the last 10 to 15 years there has been a 27% reduction on how much employers spend on training and a 31% reduction in how much the government spends on adult education.” (BBC Today Programme: 29/11/24)
This has resulted in fewer and fewer skilled workers, which on the surface you would think was a bad thing for both employers and government. But austerity obsessed Tory governments and tight-fisted businesses have been able to recruit cheap labour from abroad to fill the gaps. Businesses have not been training British people because it saves money for the shareholders. Tory government hasn’t been training people because it’s dogmatic adherence to neo-liberal economic theory dictates it cut public spending as much as possible.
The Tories have tried to divert our attention away from this policy by highlighting illegal boat crossings and employers have, understandably, simply remained silent concerning their contribution to record immigrant numbers. Yet business’s made 453,000 work visa applications for the year ending September 2024, a figure eight times greater than those arriving illegally.
So next time a right-wing politician or commentator goes rants about immigrant numbers remember it is businesses that are responsible for the large majority of immigrants coming to this country. If they and government had invested in training our young people over the last 20 years then we would not need to import cheaper labour from abroad, but then business would have made less profit and government would have had to spend a little more money on adult education.
