visa reforms in the face of skills shortages. Even before the number of vacancies reached a record 1.3 million last summer (and has only slowly declined since then), a poll had suggested that 81% of directors would “support loosening immigration requirements as a way of easing the pressures on the labour market”. The UK’s technology trade


association, techUK, has also made its position clear over tackling the skills shortage. Over winter, it presented ministers with five demands: four involved improved arrangements for training and upskilling, while the fifth urged the government to “enable businesses to access and attract high quality international talent by reducing costs of the immigration system and streamline the Shortage Occupation List”. Even this, though, might not


be enough, according to the think- tank, the Social Market Foundation (SMF). Its report, ‘Routes to Resolution’, suggests the UK could need a gross total of a million migrants a year because of the skills gap and an ageing population. Jonathan Thomas, senior fellow


at the SMF, said that last year’s high level of migration “could well be the norm rather than the exception”. He added: “Over the longer term, the UK’s deep historical connections with some of the most populated countries across the globe – India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Bangladesh – have the potential to create far more sizeable flows of people to the UK than the smaller and stagnating populations of the EU ever realistically could.”


THE NEED FOR EVIDENCE-BASED DEBATE But James Kirkup, director of the SMF, said that while immigration “is going to be a major part of British national life in the decades ahead”, he feared calls for a wider national debate were unlikely to be heeded “in view of the main political parties’ refusal to face obvious truths across issues from labour shortages to small boat crossings” by illegal immigrants, which exceeded 45,000 last year. In an article published online in


May, Christa Rottensteiner, chief of mission at the UK branch of the International Organisation


for Migration, and Claire Kumar, senior research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute, warned that the UK’s “increasingly toxic” political rhetoric on migration – mainly as a result of the illegal crossings by boat from France – had real world consequences that could cause all manner of harms. “What is desperately needed in


the UK,” they wrote, “is a more balanced narrative and more evidence-based migration policies. And it is up to all of us to ensure a more balanced public narrative. Providing accurate data and facts is the basic starting point, although a focus limited to numbers can be easily manipulated to stoke uncertainty and fear. “We need a deeper and richer


national debate about what that will mean and how we can approach migration issues in a way that meets our economic needs and acknowledges the concerns that some people have about population changes.” The problem for the UK’s


politicians is that they feel obliged to focus on the latter: namely, the unease among the voters about the effects overall immigration is having on the UK’s housing, infrastructure and services. For businesses, the problems


are purely pragmatic: namely, the need to attract many more of the brightest and best from around the world to help fill that ever-widening skills gap. Of course, so many rival


economies across the globe are facing exactly the same problem. The difference now is that many of them are adopting far-reaching policies to try and resolve that problem.


53


“WE NEED A DEEPER NATIONAL DEBATE ABOUT HOW WE CAN APPROACH MIGRATION IN A WAY THAT MEETS OUR ECONOMIC NEEDS.”


CHRISTA ROTTENSTEINER, UK BRANCH OF THE INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATION FOR MIGRATION & CLAIRE KUMAR, OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE


THINK GLOBAL PEOPLE IMMIGRATION


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