On the 14/02/20 during Boris Johnson’s first reshuffled cabinet meeting, it was announced that the UK will be adopting a points-based immigration system from the 1st January 2021, which is thought to reduce the amount of low-skilled European Union (EU) migrants by 90,000 a year.
A spokesperson said:
Following discussion, cabinet agreed the implementation of a points-based immigration from 1 January 2021. The system will be simpler and fairer, and will not discriminate between countries – and will return democratic control of immigration to the British people.
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The prime minister stressed that we must demonstrate that the UK is open and welcoming to talent from across the world; but the new system would end reliance on importing cheap, low-skilled labour – bringing down migration numbers overall.
More details will be released regarding the new points-based system (PBS) this week.
However, Chetal Patel, immigration expert and partner at Bates Well, believes there are still many questions left unanswered.
Ms Patel said:
What do we know so far? Not much.
We will have a points-based system and it’s likely that the government will adopt the existing framework which will assist in getting the system ready to go live on 1 January 2021. Will it be a question of ministers pulling ‘certain levers within the system’ to make it more controlled? I expect so. To a certain degree these ‘levers’ already exist in our current system.
We can expect a tougher immigration system which suggests more compliance and onerous obligations on businesses. Will smaller businesses have sufficient infrastructure to deal with this? Will we see a more heavily policed immigration system in place?
Darius is the editor of HRreview. He has previously worked as a finance reporter for the Daily Express. He studied his journalism masters at Press Association Training and graduated from the University of York with a degree in History.
- Darius McQuaid
- Darius McQuaid
- Darius McQuaid
- Darius McQuaid
