Migration Policy of United Kingdom - Essay Example

The applicant work experience, higher academic achievement such as a bachelor's, master's and PhD degrees, English language ability which requires that an applicant should have a bachelors degree taught in English - will be given more merits and consideration. Migrants must also pass the International English Language Testing System requirement. The government will also deem the employment of illegal workers a criminal offence carrying a punishment of up to two years imprisonment. The new system also calls for the termination of 'chain migration', which means that there will be no instantaneous rights for a family member to bring in more relatives into the country.

In addition, the new rules call for the automatic termination of right for residency for some categories of migrants and calls for an introduction of new mechanisms for an enhanced migration control. Although research on migration suggests that economic migration had given the UK economic advantage as migration is not detrimental to employment opportunities or responsible for depressing wages, some policymakers contended that the low cost of labour only benefited employers, but not the unskilled workers, composed mainly of many migrant workers.

Immigration to the United Kingdom has increased considerably during the previous and the current decade. With continued economic development and historically low unemployment figures causing increased demand for migrant labourers, immigration figures have augmented to an unparalleled number (Pinkerton, 2005). As a result of this of rising immigration figures which caused apprehensions not only to the policy makers but also to the populations - 60 percent of the populace, according to a recent survey, believe that there are too many immigrants in Britain - lawmakers have tried to create efficient policies to handle migration (MORI Survey, 2006).

One important part of the UK debate on migration is the question of how to control the flow of workers from the 10 new members of the European Union joined in May 2004. Under the EU terms, existing members of the EU had the alternative to put provisional limitations on the migrant workers from the Central and Eastern European countries. This was devised to alleviate any possible 'labor market shocks' which will occur as a result of the economic differences between existing and new EU member countries.

In the months that followed, many other existing member countries began to put restrictions on the surge of workers from these countries with the exception of UK, Ireland, and Sweden. In effect, the UK government came under enormous pressure to put restrictions and devise plans to control labor migration (Shaw, 2004). Amid these new migration policies, new studies show that migrant workers have contributed as much 36.7 billion - or 3% - to the United Kingdom's economy since 1997 and more than one-third of that amount spawned since the appointment of 10 countries to form the EU-25 in May 2004.

Nonetheless, the report, from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, stated the benefits had not been allocated uniformly, and had most likely added to an increase in unemployment among the unskilled laborers. Furthermore, the institute stated that about 5% of the existing workers has arrived in the country since 1997 - one third of those since 2004 - and that the latest migrants comprise 4.5% of the national wage bill. Recent research