経済沈滞と緊縮財政で変貌する英国の移民政策 －流入規制と人材確保は両立するか－

Abstract

In the United Kingdom the proportion of the population born overseas has doubled in two decades to more than 11percent.It means that about seven million people living in the country are immigrants. The new government headed by Prime Minister David Cameron, which took over power last May, maintains that the rise is largely due to the Labour Party's “open door" immigration policy, under which 3.2 million foreigners were added to the population during the party's13 years of administration. As pledged in the election campaign, he aims to reduce the net immigration from its current level of more than 200,000 a year to “tens of thousands" before the next election in 2015, and has launched a series of restrictive measures. Since the United Kingdom can not restrict the influx of citizens of other EU member states, he measures taken so far focus on immigration from outside Europe ,However, here also the government is caught in a dilemma, The National Health Service(NHS) relies heavily on doctors and nurses from non-European countries, Similarly many British firms have filled the shortage of IT and communication technology professionals with those invited from India, USA and other countries outside Europe, The business community is adamant about keeping the current level of entry of foreign employees. This is based upon intra-company transfer(ICT)which takes the lion's share of labour migration from outside Europe. In order to attain the pledged immigration cut, the government turned its eye to students from non― European countries and decided to reduce the issuance of visas by 400,000 by 2015. A non-European undergraduate student pays on average ￡20,000 per annum. For approximately 700 private schools in the United Kingdom, the planned visa reduction will result in a fatal loss of revenue. They fiercely oppose the cut, and the government was already obliged to revise the target figures. International migration is a complex phenomenon, and nobody can predict its future trend with certainty. Nevertheless l dare say that it would probably be very hard for Prime Minister Cameron to bring his promise to fruition.