UK immigration cap can be bypassed by intra company transfers

H S Rao
London, Jul 4 (PTI) Many foreign companies in Britain,
particularly from India, have brought in thousands of non-EU
workers through 'intra-company transfers' route, and can
easily bypass the new immigration cap reducing it to a "sham".
The Home Office has admitted that the interim cap will
not apply to "intra-company transfers", or ICTS, which allow
firms to bring in non-EU nationals who are already on their
payroll, The Sunday Telegraph reported on Sunday.
According to Home Office data, Tata Consultancy
Services (TCS), sponsored 4,600 of its employees to come to
Britain in 2008 through the ICTS route.
Although there is no suggestion that TCS has broken
the rules, the scale of immigration from India through ICTs is
startling, the report claimed.
Another Indian company, Infosys Technologies Limited,
sponsored 3,235 people to come to Britain in the same year
while Wipro Technologies, brought in 2,420.
While the Home Office said there were 30,000 arrivals
under the ICT system last year, this was down from a total of
46,000 the previous year.
Indians made up 70 per cent of those brought to
Britain on ICTs.
Others were from nations including the US, South
Africa, Japan and China.
Although the system is intended to help companies that
cannot recruit suitable candidates within Britain, critics
claim that in practice much of the work could easily have been
done by Britons.
The Home Office has disclosed names of about 20,000
employers registered to bring skilled migrant workers into
Britain on so-called "Tier 2" visas.
Names on the list, published on the UK Border Agency
website last week, range from Chelsea football Club and
Conservative Campaign Headquarters to hundreds of Thai
restaurants, Indian takeaways and kebab shops.
Of the companies on the list, about 2,700 are
permitted to use ICTs. Yet the UK Border Agency has only 125
staff responsible for visiting sponsor companies and keeping
checks on them.
Unions and professional bodies claim that ICTs are
being manipulated by some companies as a source of cheap
labour, undercutting Britons and forcing them out of work.
Damian Green, the immigration minister, said: "It is
important that we attract the brightest and the best people
who can make a real difference to our economic growth, but
immigration is too high and needs to be reduced.
"The Government has announced it will introduce a
limit on economic migration from outside EU as part of work to
scale back net migration to the levels of the 1990s, to tens
of thousands rather than hundreds of thousands". PTI