Companies' fill low-level IT jobs with foreign workers
January 05 2010 by Liam Clifford
UK Immigration comes under scrutiny amid revelations that 30,000 workers are not needed.
Tens of thousands of overseas IT workers are being transferred to work for their company’s subsidiaries in the UK on UK visas, reigniting the argument that British workers are being deprived of job opportunities.
Last year alone almost 30,000 non-EU workers entered the country, for the purpose of IT work, under the UK immigration intra-company transfer scheme, the majority coming from India.
Most of the workers arriving came for low to mid-level IT jobs, which currently have no significant skills shortages in the UK and among British workers, this has been seen has a blatant sign employers are exploiting the system to pay foreign workers less and save money.
Ann Swain, from the Association of Professional Staffing Companies, said that the intra-company transfers were designed so that specialists within a particular organisation could fill more senior positions overseas. But she added that it appeared this was not happening and being used to fill lower level jobs in which the skills used can be easily found here.
Shadow UK Immigration Minister, Damian Green said: “It seems astonishing that when British workers can’t find jobs we are bringing foreign workers from halfway round the world.
“This is another sign that Gordon Brown’s ‘British jobs for British workers’ was a meaningless soundbite.”
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