Every country wants to protect its borders and monitor who comes in and out of the country. Any expanding economy will also need additional workers. Immigration policy is a power that is retained at Westminster and the title of the government’s 5-year plan, Controlling our borders: making migration work for Britain reflects an emphasis on security and having the right people to fill labour and skills shortages. It focuses on internal interests rather than the needs of people who have been forced to flee from their homes, or of people forced to look for work because of poverty.

Historically the regulation of immigration has been very complex. There are 80 different schemes which allow people to come into the UK, and in March 2006 the government announced its intention to replace all the different work permit and entry schemes with a single system based on points. They plan to have 5 tiers:

1. Highly skilled professionals, including doctors, scientists and entrepreneurs
2. Skilled people with job offers such as medical workers and tradesmen
3. Low skilled including people such as contract workers in catering and construction
4. Students from other countries
5. Temporary workers, youth mobility to cover sports people, professional musicians, cultural exchanges and working holidays for young people.

An advisory board will inform the Home Office so that entry points can be adjusted to reflect skills and labour shortages. As part of new control measures, some short-term workers will have to lodge a bond on entry, refundable on exit, and employers will face large fines for each illegal worker.

The Government hopes that there will no longer be a need for many low skilled workers from outside the European Union (EU). This may cause problems for some of our traditional areas of migration from the developing world. For example, minority ethnic catering establishments may struggle to find suitable employees. Similarly, Asian medical staff, who have traditionally been an important part of the health service, may no longer find it easy to get permission to work here.

There are some concerns about these plans:

1. They will effectively discriminate against poorer, less well-qualified immigrants who mayneed the opportunities more, and who could make a real difference to their families and the development of their home countries by the money they send home.
2. Attracting skilled people can be a brain drain on developing countries. It underlines the detrimental effect of ‘selfish’ immigration policies which do nothing to address people’s underlying need to migrate. And of course the vast majority of people would rather stay at home with friends and family than be forced to leave home in search of work.

For more detail on the governments plans see: BBC News ‘Migration: How points would work’ 11/03/06
In the meantime, a complex system of migrant entry schemes remains in existence. See migrant workers page for more on entry schemes.

UK Borders Bill
Legislation around immigration has gradually become more restrictive and infringements of regulations criminalised. There are a number of concerns regarding the provisions of the UK Borders Bill currently (2007) making its way through parliament:

In trying to stop people working without documents Immigration Officers will be able to seize the pay packets of undocumented workers who may themselves be the victims of traffickers or unscrupulous employers.

Immigration Officers will have increased powers, for example, the ability to detain people on suspicion that an offence has been committed. While these powers have steadily increased in legislation from 1999 – 2006, so that they parallel the powers of police, they have not been accompanied by increased mechanisms to check abuse of power, similar to those to which the police are subject.

Foreign nationals who have committed one of a wide range of offences or have been sentenced to one year’s imprisonment are to be deported automatically, regardless of the circumstances.