
Britain to Foreign Workers: If You Don't Make $50,000 a Year, Please Leave - wbsun
http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/02/03/465407797/britain-to-foreign-workers-if-you-dont-make-50-000-a-year-please-leave
======
whack
As an immigrant myself, this seems like a vastly superior system compared to
most others in the world.

Pretty mcuh every country's immigration system falls into one of the following
buckets:

1) Market based. Companies "bid" on foreign workers, either directly by paying
for the visa, or indirectly using the worker's wage. Some form of quote
exists, and the highest bidders win.

2) Lottery. Set a minimum qualifications, which is pretty lenient, and a quota
that is significantly lower than the number of qualified applicants. Use a
lottery system to decide who gets in and who doesn't.

3) Central planning. Some government agency decides which professions and
industries are most important to the country, and need foreign workers the
most. Politics, special interests lobbying and/or government incompetence in
judging market needs, all figure prominently.

4) Some government bureaucrat, who reads through your life story, and spends
30 minutes meeting with you, gets to arbitrarily decide who stays and who
doesn't.

4 scares the hell out of me. 2 is just stupid. I don't have any trust in the
government's ability to effectively conduct 3. 1 is the least of all evils
unfortunately.

~~~
maxxxxx
I am immigrant and I like the idea too. Ted Cruz's call for a very high
minimum salary for H-1Bs is also the only thing I will probably ever agree
with him.

~~~
1024core
Instead of setting a high minimum salary, sort the offers by descending order
of salary and give the visa to the top N.

The biggest excuse for H-1B visa is that the company can't find qualified
workers. Pay enough, and you _will_ find someone qualified sooner or later.

~~~
serge2k
Thus ensuring that Silicon Valley gets to eat up all the H-1Bs.

~~~
yebyen
Not if SV has qualified locals that will work for less than the H1-B bid
amount? Why would they pay above market rate?

(Maybe I have absolutely no idea what salaries are like in SV, I'll grant you
that... Western/Rochester NY local.)

------
mabbo
My sister works as a primary teacher in the London area. She's Canadian, and
can't find a job in Ontario (we pay our teachers very well, so there's rarely
a shortage). But the British don't pay their teachers very well, meaning that
talented teachers like her who are working hard to contribute to Britain's
future for fairly paltry wages would be kicked out of the country under this
plan.

If Britain can't meet it's demand for teachers at the wages it wants to offer
without immigration, how do they expect to do it when they kick all the
immigrants out? In essence, it's going to mean that British taxpayers have to
foot the bill for the higher wages needed to get British teachers, or else
some schools will simply have not enough teachers at all.

It saddens me that such a fantastic country would be so short-sighted.

~~~
namenotrequired
One more data point: my friend is a doctor and has lived in the UK for about 9
years. She's terribly overworked and makes less than the stated amount.

~~~
arethuza
She must still be in training then as most qualified doctors in the UK NHS
earn way more than that:

[https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/about/careers-
medicine/pay-...](https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/about/careers-medicine/pay-
doctors)

Worth noting that there are no limits on what doctors in private practice can
earn and some NHS doctors do private work on the side to augment their NHS
salaries.

~~~
Silhouette
The GP's comment doesn't seem inconceivable. Remember that terms like junior
doctor or doctor in training in the UK typically refer to anyone below the
level of GP or Consultant. That covers typically 6 years of academic training,
followed by at least 5 years of postgraduate clinical practice. Even someone
in their fifth postgraduate year, working full time, and making progress as
rapidly as the system allows still has a base salary under 35K, and not
everyone will progress that quickly.

So, depending on what funny business happens with counting base salaries vs.
additional income and what happens with junior doctors' contracts when the
current clash with the government has been resolved, a proposal like the one
we're talking about really could wind up with someone several years into a
career as a junior doctor falling foul of the rules.

Of course it's highly unlikely to come to that, because the NHS is already in
serious trouble and would surely collapse completely without the foreign
workers it employs not just as doctors but more widely. Any rules about
minimum salary are inevitably going to have get-out clauses to protect
essential industries from catastrophic consequences.

------
Someone1234
£35K is not unreasonable. However if you ask me it should be £35K outside of
London and £38.5K within. It far too easy to find a London job that pays £35K,
even a lot of entry positions are in the high 20s (27-28K).

That being said, while it is fine for workers, what the UK government have
tried to do to people on family visas is very immoral. And has caused a lot of
families to be separated.

\- To sponsor a spouse you must make: £18,600

\- To sponsor a spouse and one child you must make: £22,400 (+£2,400 for each
additional child).

For reference the medium salary in the UK is around £22,044, the average is
around £26,500 but neither tell the whole story, the UK has a wide salary
disparity (in particular London Vs. elsewhere), and some charities project
that the above rules preclude over a third of the population from bringing in
their family.

Can you imagine being separated from your spouse and child because you don't
make enough? Even if that spouse is perfectly able to work? And the worst part
is that a lot of people get caught in a poverty trap, where they don't make
enough to pay for the skills that they would need to escape it.

The problem is these types of rules come from London where wages are much
higher and from very affluent individuals who came from money. They typically
impact the poorest parts of the UK, but as they say "out of sight out of
mind." Who cares if someone in north England cannot see their family for
years... Certainly not Westminister.

~~~
bruceb
Why is immoral to make sure people earn enough to support a spouse and a child
that they will bring with them or have come over?

Is England obligated to take care of non citizens?

US has same rules.

~~~
Someone1234
> Why is immoral to make sure people earn enough to support a spouse and a
> child that they will bring with them or have come over?

Because separating families is immoral. If you don't think causing a parent
and child to be separated is immoral then your list of immoral actions must be
slim.

> Is England obligated to take care of non citizens?

You call them non-citizens, I call them dependants of UK citizens. Also the
rules entirely ignore the spouse's earning potential which is stupid.

> US has same rules.

No it doesn't.

The US does have a minimum income level but firstly it is much lower, and
additionally you can get numerous additional sponsors to combine incomes.

So someone in the US could get their parents as co-sponsors, and thus allowing
even someone working at Walmart to bring in a foreign spouse and child.

~~~
true_religion
> Also the rules entirely ignore the spouse's earning potential which is
> stupid.

Are spouses of people on this type of VISA allowed to work?

> Because separating families is immoral.

You do know the default answer to that is: "Fine, as paragons of morality, we
will hereby no longer allow any foreign workers with spouses who make under
XX,XXX to enter the UK, because separating them from their family is immoral."

Proviso: I believe in having substantially more open borders than we do today;
I just don't think your argument to morality is a very good one.

~~~
Someone1234
> Are spouses of people on this type of VISA allowed to work?

Yes.

> You do know the default answer to that is: "Fine, as paragons of morality,
> we will hereby no longer allow any foreign workers with spouses who make
> under XX,XXX to enter the UK, because separating them from their family is
> immoral."

You completely misunderstand what is even being discussed.

We're talking about UK NATIONALS who if they earn below the threshold cannot
bring in a foreign spouse or child.

We are NOT talking about foreign nationals on work visas and their ability to
bring in other foreign nationals.

To use a specific example: If a UK national moved to the US, got married, and
had a kid. If all three of them wanted to move to the UK, they would be
separated for years. The UK national would have to move to the UK alone, get a
job, earn 23K/year, and only then could they apply to bring the other two
over. This ignores how long the visa process takes or how many years of work-
history you need to get approval!

~~~
astrange
"Spouse or child" or "spouse and child"? A foreign child of a British citizen
is a British citizen and shouldn't have a problem getting in.

I mean, once the passport office finishes rejecting their paperwork because
"it was printed on US letter paper" or "your cosigner's signature is too big"
or "their signature was in blue ink". (I had to mail it all in four times.)

------
zelos
My first thought was that's going to have a big impact on the NHS and the care
industry:

"Metcalfe says there will be temporary exceptions for people with skills such
as nursing, because there is a shortage in the U.K."

Presumably central government has perfect information about the job market and
will be able to make all the exceptions required in every industry?

~~~
jimrandomh
Hmm? If the prevailing wages are low, then claims that there is a shortage are
lies; if there were a genuine shortage, then any employer could guarantee they
got as many as they wanted by offering a better wage, and would have already
done so. The entire point of setting a wage cutoff is that it's an impartial
standard, which can't be fooled by false rumors of shortages. Making
exceptions would defeat the purpose, and it would be bad for the people in
fields covered by those exceptions.

~~~
adventured
> If the prevailing wages are low, then claims that there is a shortage are
> lies

That's not necessarily correct. That's only the case in a vacuum, it falls
apart in reality.

For example, the US has routine shortages of farm field workers, in places
like California, for picking etc. The wages are very low. It's a combination
of nobody but illegal immigrants wanting to do the job for $10 / hour because
it's a miserable job, and the business owner not being able to afford
dramatically higher wages. It's a very persistent problem throughout
California. In your theory, the wages could only be so low due to a vast over-
supply of labor; there are in fact many other reasons an imbalance like that
can occur.

[http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/oct/25/decline...](http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/oct/25/decline-
farm-labor-immigration-reform/)

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/on-u-s-farms-fewer-hands-for-
the...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/on-u-s-farms-fewer-hands-for-the-
harvest-1439371802)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/us/california-farmers-
shor...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/us/california-farmers-short-of-
labor-and-patience.html)

~~~
jimrandomh
This is, again, straightforward microeconomics. The reason none of the farm
owners is able to afford higher wages is because the price they can sell their
crops at is set by competition with other farms, whose prices reflect the fact
that they are not themselves paying higher wages. If cheap labor were
unavailable, wages and prices would both rise and the business owners would
end up about the same.

The situation is somewhat complicated by the seasonal nature of the work,
which means yearly cycles of hiring and firing. We normally associate periods
of intense hiring with a shortage (ie, a recent shift in the economy means
much more demand for some category of worker and not enough people have been
trained yet to fill the demand), but in the case of agricultural work, that's
part of the economy in steady-state.

~~~
goldbrick
It's not purely that simple. Ideally, the farm owners are trying to hit the
price point at the intersection of the supply and demand curves. If the demand
curve was perfectly inelastic your explanation would be sufficient, but most
consumers are going to balk when a carton of strawberries reaches a certain
level, and therefore the market is putting downward pressure on the price due
to demand.

~~~
douche
Maybe if these luxury crops can't be sold economically without resorting to
illegal labor, they should be replaced with other products that are more
economical.

I can go pick my own strawberries in New England _when they are in season_ for
$1-2 a pound. That season might only be about three or four weeks in
June/July, but there's other stuff the other eleven months of the year. If I
want fresh strawberries in December, they ought to be at a premium.

We used to use a lot of teen-aged labor for this kind of low-skill seasonal
work, and I don't necessarily think there's anything wrong with that. There's
still parts of Aroostook county in Maine where they have a weird school year,
because traditionally they needed every warm body to get the potato harvest
picked in early fall.

------
kartan
> non-Europeans on skilled worker visas — known as Tier 2 visas So it only
> applies to people that were allowed in the country because they are "skilled
> workers". This kind of visa already has a minimum wage requirement. I read
> somewhere that they are applying the same rules to stay that they applied to
> give the visa. Still a change, but not what it looks like in the title.

~~~
moomin
More generally, the existing system works on a points basis, which takes into
account a whole bunch of factors that have been tuned for years. You get a
certain number of points for a degree, a certain number if you get paid X
amount &c

And then some numpty who clearly hasn't read past Economics 101 gets it into
their head that anyone who doesn't earn 35k isn't pulling their weight.

------
stegosaurus
35K GBP is an odd number. To be honest, most numbers in the UK are.

In London, with that salary, you will not be able to buy a studio apartment
anywhere within commuting distance of the centre. You'd need to triple it to
even think about owning an actual home.

In many cities in the north, 35K will get you a home, in cash, in <5 years.

How does that work, then? Do we deport people who fully pay off homes and
retire because they're not earning 35K?

Very odd. Frankly, most of the UK's capital/income thresholds are odd for this
exact reason. They end up being piffling amounts in the South East and obscene
values in the North.

------
ergothus
So I've read multiple places that low-income immigrant labor does NOT reduce
the demand for local workers, and results in a general increase in wages
overall. (which would mean that most countries immigration policies are based
on inaccurate fears)

I'm totally willing to believe this. But I don't understand it. Is it that
some portion of low-income local workers are qualified for more skilled work
but there isn't the demand? Something else? Can someone give me the simplified
version of events that explains this?

~~~
LaMarseillaise
The income of low-income workers is spent back into the economy, allowing more
people to be employed providing the goods that were purchased. This means it
at least breaks even.

Since it stands to reason that the individual immigrant will benefit from
immigrating with a higher income, it is also stands to reason that this income
being spent would be greater than if they had stayed where they were.

~~~
tenpies
> The income of low-income workers is spent back into the economy

I think this statement vastly underestimates how much money is remitted back
home by foreign workers - even low-income workers. In Canada, we lose about 24
billion USD every year this way [1].

\---

[1] [http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/sending-remittances-low-
doll...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/sending-remittances-low-
dollar-1.3404145)

------
nols
In case anyone else wondered in light of the brexit talk, by foreigner they
mean people outside the EU.

------
randyrand
"Come April, she will very likely have to leave her British life partner"

If I was in that position I would push for a green card marrige. Or perhaps
just a normal marrige? not familiar with the dynamics of a life partnership.

~~~
foldr
Being married to your partner doesn't make much difference with respect to
British immigration law. It just makes it somewhat easier to show that you
really are in a relationship with someone. If she applies for a new visa on
the basis that she has a partner who's a British citizen, then her partner
will have to meet the income requirement regardless of whether they're married
or not.

------
roel_v
The Netherlands already has this, for comparison. Some other EU countries too,
I presume - though I'm not sure.

------
rahelzer
Great idea. But why limit it to just Foreign workers? Just think how Uber they
would be if they would just encourage anybody to use their EU passport and
move to Elbonia if they don't pull down $50k.

------
mschuster91
How about the following:

1) All countries drop their borders.

2) All countries begin taxing especially international companies (Amazon,
Apple!) fairly and impose sanctions upon countries currently acting as tax
heavens. Also, criminally obtained and stashed profits e.g. of (former)
dictators or corrupt officials, gets seized and redistributed.

3) Rich(er) countries use this money to actually improve the conditions in the
countries where migration originates, no matter if due to poorness, wars,
climate change etc.

As a planet we cannot longer extract and privatize profits from poor regions
and people. It is simply not sustainable (and never has been, tbh).

~~~
SixSigma
> All countries begin taxing especially international companies (Amazon,
> Apple!) fairly and impose sanctions upon countries currently acting as tax
> heavens.

And who will start this particular ball rolling.

There are tax havens in the US - Delaware, UK - London and plenty of other
places

~~~
DrScump
Apple's primary tax havens are overseas, with Ireland being a key one (Apple
pioneered the so-called "Double Irish" dodge, laundering profits through
Ireland incentives _twice_.)

