06 May 2016

Financial Times: Most EU citizens in UK would not meet work visa rules, data show

Three-quarters of EU citizens working in the UK would not meet current visa requirements for non-EU overseas workers if Britain left the bloc. The rate would rise to about 81% once new rules take effect, according to research carried out for the FT by Oxford University’s Migration Observatory.

For certain sectors the impact would be even greater: as many as 94 per cent of EU workers currently employed in hotels and restaurants would fail to meet existing entry requirements, as would 96 per cent of those working on Britain’s farms.

The study acknowledges that Britain would be likely to change its immigration requirements if it were to quit the EU, potentially easing the rules to allow some EU immigration. Legal experts say those already in the country would be entitled to stay and Vote Leave says EU workers already here would have their “rights unaffected”.

However, it illustrates the scale of the challenge employers would face in finding staff in the event of a British exit if the government moved to curb immigration from the EU, as pledged by Brexit campaigners.

In other parts of the workforce including construction, manufacturing, energy and transport, about three-quarters of EU workers would not be allowed in if they had to qualify under the current rules applied to other overseas workers.

Even the banking and financial sector — which includes professional services firms and management consultants, as well as the cleaners, back-office staff and security guards that work for them — would suffer, with 66 per cent of EU workers excluded.

The study shows that there are almost 2.2m EU workers in the UK, comprising of about 6.6 per cent of the total workforce. Manufacturing companies have more EU workers as a proportion of their workforce than any other sector, with a little more than 10 per cent of the 3m workers overall.

A total of 442,000 EU citizens are employed in retail, hotels and restaurants, making up almost 8 per cent of the sector’s 5.7m workforce. Banking and finance has about 360,000 workers from the EU, or about 6.8 per cent of the sector.

Carlos Vargas-Silva, author of the report, said: “Most sectors of the UK labour market now have a significant EU migrant workforce — and many of these are lower-paid sectors, such as hotels and manufacturing. Even if the immigration system is redesigned after a Brexit vote, any system that selects EU workers based on skills and pay is likely to hit these sectors hardest.” [...]

Full article on Financial Times (subscription required)

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