Priti Patel will be urged to raise the minimum salary threshold to £36,700 for all new foreign workers who want to live in the UK after Brexit.
The Centre for Social Justice, co-founded by Iain Duncan Smith, is making the call to increase the threshold in a bid to restore “integrity” to Britain’s immigration system.
A report from the right-wing think-tank set to be published tomorrow warns that record levels of low-skilled immigration in recent years have pushed wages down for those born in the UK on lower salaries.
But it has already been slammed by commentators.
Author Emma Kennedy said: “So let me get this straight. When we have a DIRE shortage of nurses, our EU nurses are returning home in droves, Priti Patel wants to raise the threshold for migrants wanting to work here to £36,700?
“Who do Brexiters think is going to look after our sick? Dogs with sad eyes?”
The Centre for Social Justice report says the Home Office could exempt key sectors like the NHS to allow workers making less than £36,700 to continue to come to the UK to work.
But it is unclear how industries such as construction, hospitality, farming and services would cope.
Madness. Many jobs carried out by ‘migrants’ – in nursing, social care, farming, industry, hospitality, etc. pay less than £36k a year; there aren’t enough British citizens to take their places. Are these sectors, vital to our wellbeing & economy, going to be allowed to collapse?
— Malcolm Fincken (@MalcolmFincken) August 11, 2019
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