Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has invited Americans who are annoyed at the election of Donald Trump to migrate to London.
Speaking alongside Google CEO Sundar Pichal, the invitation of Labour politician Khan comes amid rumours sad liberals are threatening to emigrate from the U.S.
Khan brought up reports that, after Donald Trump’s shock win in last week’s presidential election, left-wing Americans have been looking into migrating.
Referencing rumours that such a phenomenon caused Canada’s immigration website to crash, Khan said Trump haters with U.S. citizenship should look into migrating to the UK.
“Millions of people, I’m told, used Google’s search engine post the election on Tuesday – we know millions use it every single day,” he said.
“I heard one of the most googled things since Wednesday has been ‘how do you emigrate?’
“If talented people based in the US want to come here to London, my message is simple – London is open,” he told the audience.
Khan’s appearance follows the announcement that Google confirmed plans for a new, 10 storey expansion to its Kings Cross headquarters, which currently promises 3,000 jobs in Britain.
Describing the election last week and the reaction to it a “challenging time” the India-born businessman said he was hopeful of a smooth transition of power.
“Coming from the US, we’ve obviously been going through an important moment and it’s important to remember it’s a democratic process,” Mr. Pichal said.
“It’s a robust and challenging democratic process. But it’s important that we now have a smooth transition.
“We’ve had a deeply divided election, but we now hopefully can move beyond the rhetoric of the campaign to actually getting things done.
“And so I remain optimistic we will go through this transition well, but it’s been a challenging time and it definitely weighs on all our minds.”
The tech CEO, who was paid over $100 million in 2015 alone, announced that open borders are “absolutely” vital to the UK’s success.
Pichai warned the UK government’s planned post-Brexit crackdown on immigration could affect Google’s future plans, saying, “In our experience as a company, when we have been able to bring people together and operate in an open and connected way it achieves tremendous impact over time. Those are the values we cherish, and we have been open and public about how we think about these things.”
“Increasingly, for the kinds of complex things we do, we need to bring people who are across many disciplines—with many different backgrounds—together to solve problems. That’s how you can build newer things, so that is particularly important for us,” he added
Sources at Google say the £1 billion investment depends on Brexit negotiations, and warn that it’s at risk if the UK decides to curb or ban the immigration of skilled labour.
Recent changes to the UK’s visa policy for non-EU nationals attracted criticism from India earlier this month when Prime Minister Theresa May paid a visit. New rules saw a raise in the salary threshold for intra-company (ICT) worker transfers from outside the EU.
Indian tech company Nasscom said: “A system that restricts the UK’s ability to access talent is also likely to restrict the growth and productivity of the UK economy.”
Nearly 90 per cent of all ICTs are to Indian workers in the field of IT, while the unemployment rate of UK graduates in computer science is higher than in any other field.
The move to tighten ICTs follows years of warnings that the system, intended for employees of multinational companies who are being transferred by their overseas employer to a UK branch of the body, is being used to replace British workers with cheaper Indian labour, and relocate British jobs to India.