MigrationWatch seeks your views

UKTECH members have been invited to contribute their experiences to a project being carried out for think-tank MigrationWatch UK on fast track visas and outsourcing.

An IT professional who has been without work in the UK for nearly three years contacted the think-tank with details of his experience and suggested that they should seek further views from members of the UKTECH network.

He told MigrationWatch UK:

• that the UK market for IT skills has been flooded since the Government introduced Fast Track Visas for the sector, and that since IT was taken off the Fast Track Visa list, suppliers of IT personnel from abroad have been getting around the rules by opening a branch office in the UK and taking advantage of the international laws on internal staff transfer. In reality, the personnel are immediately contracted out to other companies in the UK.
• that the IT jobs available are invariably "multi-skilled" positions and that the personnel from abroad who fill them often fake some qualifications. In many cases, the imported personnel are "rotated" between the UK and their country of origin, avoiding being in the UK for longer than 6 months so as to avoid paying tax and NI.
• that contrary to the Government's rhetoric about the IT industry, the UK is exporting IT workers to the Continent, he says; there are around 100,000 British IT workers who have been without work for around 3 years, and this situation is damaging to the UK IT industry in the longer term.
• that the IR35 and section 660 legislation has made matters worse. He says that companies made IT workers redundant then offered them the chance to return immediately as contractors - so Friday to Monday employment changes were not the workers' choice; but the Government, in particular the Revenue, have been disorganised and harsh in their response.

MigrationWatch

MigrationWatch UK is a voluntary, independent immigration and asylum monitoring organisation with no links to any political party.

Its aim is to provide objective and comprehensible information about asylum and immigration. It says that it is not "anti immigration" but does believe that the present levels of immigration, the highest in the UK's history, are making Britain overcrowded and are changing the nature of our society.

UKTECH contributions

If members of the UKTECH network would like to comment on the above points or pass on their own views, you can post here and we'll forward them to the research department.