The Migration Watch UK think tank described the introduction of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s points-based immigration system as a “total surrender to big business”, warning that the despite leaving the EU, the UK will see a rise in migration.
Starting this week, immigrants planning to move and work in the UK after the completion of the Brexit transition on January 1st will need to apply online through the UK’s new points-based system.
The system will require skilled worker applicants to have a proficiency in the English language, have a prospective job offer that will earn at least £25,600, and will need to demonstrate that they are financially able to sustain their living costs, according to the BBC.
Though the plan was intended to be modelled off of the Australian points-based system, Boris Johnson’s government has refused to set a cap on the number of immigrants allowed in as the Australian model does.
In a press release seen by Breitbart London, the chairman of Migration Watch UK, Alp Mehmet, said: “This is a total surrender to big business.”
“These new schemes will expose millions of UK jobs to competition from many millions of foreign workers for whom lower qualifications will be required, including for jobs paying little more than the National Living Wage. Nor will there be a cap on numbers or a need to give British workers a chance to apply first,” he noted.
“It is a long way from the promised control,” the Migration Watch chairman said.
Analysis conducted by the mass migration pressure group in July found that Mr Johnson’s immigration system would open the door to a pool of up to 660 million migrant workers, due to the uncapped nature of the scheme.
Migration Watch and Brexit leader Nigel Farage have long warned that the introduction of an Australian-style points-based system will, in fact, lead to a rise in overall immigration to the UK, despite the promises of Brexit to “take back control” of the country’s borders.
Last year, Prime Minister Johnson dropped the long-standing promise — though never fulfilled — from the Conservative Party to reduce net migration to the country “from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands” and has even flirted with the notion of granting amnesty to illegal immigrants in the past.
Though the new immigration system will remove the UK from the EU Free Movement of People regime, Migration Watch has warned that the system was conceived prior to the economic fallout from the Chinese coronavirus crisis and therefore should be revised.
In November, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak revealed that the government is expecting unemployment to hit 2.6 million by the middle of next year, warning that the economic emergency has “just begun”.
“This [points-based system] was drawn up long before the Covid crisis. Now, with unemployment heading for several million, we cannot simply blunder on with unlimited immigration from all over the world,” Alp Mehmet said in July.
“Immigration could easily spin out of control as it did under Labour. The only way to avoid a crisis is to put a cap on the numbers and then adjust as necessary. What is the point of taking back control over immigration only to hand it over to business?”
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