By Thomas Brandes
All eyes have been on the Rwanda scheme for as long as a year now, but with the first flight having now finally departed, let’s consider some of the other ways Rishi Sunak’s government has tried to limit immigration figures.
Most recently, the salary threshold to enter the UK on a work visa has been increased from £26,200 to £38,700. This is an increase in the general salary threshold of almost 50%, which is significant.
But what will affect most workers in the private sector is the raising of this threshold from the 25th percentile of earnings in the particular occupation to the 50th percentile, that is to the median wage. That means that a programmer for example, would now need a contract with a higher salary than £49,400 to enter the country on a work visa, compared to £34,000 previously.
It is only logical that entry-level jobs are generally paid below median wage in the specific industry, as senior workers fairly expect to be compensated more than new entries who are yet to prove themselves.
It would make sense for private companies then to prefer hiring UK nationals, as the already costly alternative of sponsoring a visa, would now have to be accompanied by a higher wage as well.
It is incomprehensible then, how foreign nationals are meant to access the UK’s private sector, unless they already have greater resources at their disposal and are able to sponsor their own visa. This policy can then not be labelled racist as such, but certainly classist.
But as it gets harder and harder for people to come into the country, how does it look for who already made it here? Anshika, 29, who did not want her surname published, has lived in London for almost two years now. She came from India on a student visa expiring this January, and realised that if she wanted to stay in the UK she would have to find a job willing to sponsor her work visa within an extremely short time frame.
She feels that the system is unfair, “with employers having to justify why they want to hire someone who’s not British.” She ended up paying the high price of £2,800 to finance the post graduate work visa herself.
In the five months since, she has been looking for job opportunities in her sector after studying International Relations and Conflict Studies. Her frustrations grew as she said: “Every application I fill, there is a question: Do you have a permanent right to work in the UK? What’s the point of giving [me] the post-study work visa, if at the end of the day all employers want you to have a permanent work visa”.
Anshika’s plan is to “find side-hustles to make living wages” while she continues looking for better job opportunities in her field.
Anshika argues that the current state of the economy does not provide a sustainable environment: “Rent is so high in this city, the council tax keeps increasing by the day, the price of basic items is quite high. It’s very difficult to survive here with the current minimum wage. The salaries are just not commensurate with the cost of living.
“And that is very visible even with strikes from pretty much every sector: transport strikes, nurse strikes, doctor strikes. Everyone’s on strike, so you know there is a real, real problem!”
With the lack of job opportunities, and a roaring cost of living crisis, Anshika is struggling and is considering returning to her home country, India.
Anshika does not believe that the Rwanda bill is an efficient deterrent: “When asylum seekers leave their homes, their lives are already at risk. They go through extreme hardships, we all know how many accidents take place in the sea every day. I don’t think they have much of a choice in terms of moving from their own country, considering the environment is just not conducive to life.”
Additionally, she defines the increase of the visa salary threshold as “putting a cost on love: you can only fall in love with someone who is not British if you earn a certain amount.”
Mahika Panchmatia, 24, also from India, sees this a bit differently: “I believe they are discouraging people from coming to the UK, because it [the visa salary threshold] previously used to be £26,000 and now it’s gotten up to £38,000.”
This was specifically referenced by her employer. Mahika said: “This was a criteria while my company was deciding if they should hire me full-time. And the reason they gave me for not hiring me full-time was that they can’t afford to pay me £38,000 (…) because I don’t have enough experience to be earning that”.
She acknowledges that the company could just hire a UK national for the same position and pay them less.
Mahika thinks “all major policy changes are in some way related to Brexit. Since now, Europeans also need a visa to work in the UK, I think the demand has gone up for these sponsored jobs, which is why I believe they increased the threshold”. She considers it a possibility that European citizens might ‘steal’ some of the visa positions from people from other nationalities, as “language barriers come into play. A lot of companies working in the UK are primarily European and require European language speakers. Since they need sponsors now, they are more in demand than people who cannot speak those languages.”
Mahika thinks that the UK is “slowly shutting doors to migrants, because they have already accommodated so many, I feel they’ve reached a saturation point for at least the foreseeable future. They have always been welcoming towards migrants, up until now.”
Farva Shah, 26, from Pakistan, thinks the anti-immigrant atmosphere in the country can at least in part be attributed to the people’s frustration at the state of the economy: “If it wasn’t for the economy, which is in such shambles, people would not be that frustrated and asking immigrants to leave.”
She adds that it is unfair to blame immigrants, saying: “The country is in this state because of Brexit, all the wrong choices they have made, not because immigrants are coming here and taking their jobs. Immigrants have been there since the UK has been there. (…)
“The country is being run by immigrants. If you go to an off-licence they are all Turkish and Asian people; if you go to kebab shops, it’s Turkish people; I’ve never seen a single white person who’s driving an uber, or the bus; They’re all brown or Asian or European.”
Labour’s path to power, which could be imminent, does not provide much optimism. Anshika doesn’t think “any government in power at the moment can really recover economically and help the anti-immigrant sentiment to a great extent. I don’t even think the Labour party intends to do that in the short-term, it doesn’t seem to be on their agenda.”
Farva predicts this country to be headed into a deeper hole: “With these new prime ministers every month, and new policies every month, all they are doing is digging a deeper hole for themselves. The only results they’ll have, are more frustrated people, a worse economy, and no one to run the country because they kicked out all the immigrants who were actually doing all of these necessary jobs.”
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