British PM Rishi Sunak pledges immigration visa caps | EUROtoday

Issued on: 04/06/2024 – 02:24

2 min

The plan laid out by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who’s predicted to lose to Labour’s Keir Starmer within the July election, would contain a brand new cap on the variety of visas that will be set by parliament every year.

Immigration is a extremely contentious subject this election with web migration ranges hovering to 685,000 final 12 months, a determine that each predominant political events have stated is just too excessive.

While decrease than the determine in 2022, the extent of web migration final 12 months was nonetheless round thrice greater than in 2019, when the Tories gained the final election with a promise to slash migrant numbers.

Over the weekend, Starmer set out Labour’s plans to chop common migration by banning “bad bosses” who violate labour legal guidelines from bringing international employees to the nation, and by requiring employers to prioritise coaching Britons first.

With a head-to-head debate due on Tuesday the place Starmer and Sunak will face off on key points for the primary time throughout their campaigns, the prime minister’s new coverage seeks to set his celebration aside from Labour.

“We have taken bold action to cut the number of people coming to this country. The plan is working but migration levels are still too high, so we are going further,” Sunak stated in a press release.

“The Conservatives are the only party that is willing (to) take the bold action needed to cut immigration figures,” he added.

The annual cap, which is able to progressively be lowered every year to chop migration numbers, is not going to have an effect on international college students and seasonal employees.

More than 300,000 work visas got within the 12 months ending March 2024, which is greater than double the quantity granted in 2019, in accordance with official statistics.

The Tory authorities has launched new laws this 12 months to focus on common immigration, together with barring worldwide college students and social care employees from bringing dependents, and climbing the minimal wage for expert employee visas.

While the tightened laws led to an enormous decline within the variety of well being and social care visa functions in May, in accordance with inside ministry figures, care suppliers have warned that the sector is struggling to fill tens of hundreds of vacancies.

Labour’s shadow residence minister Yvette Cooper dismissed the proposed coverage as a “meaningless announcement”.

The authorities has additionally focused irregular migration via its flagship scheme to ship failed asylum seekers to Rwanda, which Sunak has admitted is not going to be carried out earlier than the election.

(AFP)