'Cap' on immigration is no longer in place

[Orcish-Horde]

Why should business invest in the local population, who are not skilled, when they can simply hire already skilled labour from elsewhere? It makes absolutely zero business sense. The purpose of a business is to maximise shareholder value not to provide welfare to local residents

Do you know anything about business? Why pay more than you need to for skilled labour?

Why should the local population accept skilled immigrants for businesses that don't invest in them?

So please tell us how this great training plan of yours works. These immigrants are statistically unlikely to leave once they have been here for over (I can't remember how many years it is, but the exact number is irrelevant here) as they tend to get married, start families, and so on. Market forces dictate that we will be able to draw these people in for the foreseeable future, as the salaries, quality of life, and so on offered here will remain excellent for some time to come. We also have far far far more applicants and hopefuls than those that are granted T1 and T2 status anyway.

The foreseeable future can change over night and if it does they are very likely to up and go.

So what have I missed exactly?

Listen, time and time again you miss the same basic points:

1) Importing labour in this manner is not 'cheap' at all. You are confusing doctors with fruitpickers I think. These people are brought in because there is a distinct lack of skilled people locally to fullfil that role. You do not seem to be taking this into account. The process for getting an individual into such a role is complicated and it has to be shown there is no one local able to fulfil the role first. The Work Permit process is also long and arduous. No company enters into it for the hell of it, and it is only done specifically when there is a specific lack of a particular skill.

It is cheaper than training the local population and a lot less hassle. Would you not agree?

2) Stop blaming Government for everything. Government does not tell universities how many places to open at med schools, and it is not (nor should it be) Government's responsibility to tell individuals what to do, nor pay for their living costs and retraining at Tax Payer's expense.

Government is to blame they control the direction the UK is going or could go and they affect peoples lifes every day with their policies or lack of. Some good, some bad. It is government's responsibility to tell individuals what to do, from the simplist of things like, Don't drink and drive to the finer points of running the UK tax system or health service. You could argue that they don't have to do this or that but at the end of the day it all comes down to government policy. I don't think anyone is saying that people should be forced to be train for a role, if that role has a shortage then perks should be on offer to draw people into it.

As a business owner and consultant to a multinational telecoms & IT company, I have plenty of exposure to the workings of employment and immigration. May I ask from where you draw your experience and opinions?

Your average working class man who can't help but wonder where the UK is heading. When off the shelf immigrant workers skilled or not can be brought into the job market or even by pass the job market all togetter at the wim of business owners like yourself.