The immigration problem from the sub-continent is not skilled IT people from Bangalore and Hyderabad, but unskilled from Mirpur near Kashmiri India. Many sadly marry 1st cousins and most end up driving taxis
May blocked plans to bring in more Indian IT workers – Vince Cable
Former UK Business Secretary Vince Cable has said Theresa May blocked plans to bring in Indian immigrants in the area of IT, claiming the former Home Secretary was "obsessed with immigration". The comments come as Prime Minister May is set to visit India in November to lay the groundwork for a possible trade partnership after …
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Tuesday 18th October 2016 15:54 GMT Loyal Commenter
Excuse me, sorry?
How did you get from one of the main arguments for brexit made by the UK's communities from the Inidan subcontinent, to 'don't vote Labour'?
Let me spell it out for you - one of the main reasons put forward for brexit in communities with a high 'ethnic' population was that immigration from the EU was unfair to people who wanted to immigrate from outside the EU. The oft-quoted hypothetical immigrant was the 'curry chef', because apparently we can't train people to make a proper curry in this country, so we have to import more of the relatives of the people who can make curry. This in itself is a totally ridiculous, and in no small part racist argument, but people in places like Birmingham seem to have bought it and voted for brexit. Given that the did so, by teh same (flawed) logic, Theresa May should be allowing more immigrants from India and Bangladesh, not fewer.
Of course, the whole immigration argument is a sack of massive bollocks, as is your assertion that this makes it a reason not to vote for the only realistic opposition to an increasingly out-of-touch and xenophobic Tory party. Or maybe you wanted UKIP? I hear they have leadership going cheap...
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Tuesday 18th October 2016 18:11 GMT Donkey Molestor X
> The immigration problem from the sub-continent is not skilled IT people from Bangalore and Hyderabad, but unskilled from Mirpur near Kashmiri India. Many sadly marry 1st cousins and most end up driving taxis
ToddR, if you think a British taxi driver is in danger of losing their job to somebody from Mirpur whose parents were 1st cousins and gave his scrambled chromosomes - then maybe that British taxi driver isn't a very good taxi driver, hmm?
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Tuesday 18th October 2016 11:01 GMT nematoad
Re: As a British IT worker....
"I would like to thank Theresa May from having cheap labour undercut me in my own country."
+1 to that.
I was the victim of such practices in as much as three Indian workers were moved in to replace two EU workers for half the price. I just wish that such sentiments as May's had been about when I lost my job.
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Tuesday 18th October 2016 11:35 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: As a British IT worker....
I was the victim of such practices in as much as three Indian workers were moved in to replace two EU workers for half the price. I just wish that such sentiments as May's had been about when I lost my job.
There's actually a much simpler way to slow that down - leave immigration alone (and thus reduce free trade collisions with the EU) and instead ban the obligation for those who are pushed out of their job by cheaper workers to teach their successors what they do. At that point you'll actually have one over on the EU when it comes to Human Rights.
It's IMHO one of the most vile practices out there that someone who is facing unemployment or at least a long job search has to spend their last few days in employment pretending to teach their cheaper successor the ropes. It's degrading and frankly not a little bit sadistic.
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Tuesday 18th October 2016 11:46 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: As a British IT worker....
"spend their last few days in employment pretending to teach their cheaper successor the ropes"
With a bit of thought this could be turned into an opportunity. Consultancy to fix up the mess the successor makes could be much more lucrative than the original job.
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Tuesday 18th October 2016 11:50 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: As a British IT worker....
With a bit of thought this could be turned into an opportunity. Consultancy to fix up the mess the successor makes could be much more lucrative than the original job.
Only until they outsource that too, because stupidity knows no bounds when it is possible to avoid the blame for the inevitable consequences.
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Tuesday 18th October 2016 14:23 GMT Voland's right hand
Re: As a British IT worker....
With a bit of thought this could be turned into an opportunity. Consultancy to fix up the mess the successor makes could be much more lucrative than the original job.
Outsourcing is driven by consultancies in the first place. You will have to compete head to head with Tata, Accenture and company. That is not a competition a lone freelancer can win.
IMHO, I will repeat it again - ensuring by means of tender that the salary is at least the median for the profession, then taxing it 50% extra additional "NEI" (National Educational Insurance") payable directly to educate whatever is in demand should do the trick.
This will put the cost of an Tier-2 import to the company at 150% the "face value" cost of a Tier-1 or local with the cost difference directly invested into educating more of what is needed. In reality the cost to the company is the same - for a local or Tier-1 you have shares, retention, pension, salary progression which all ramp up the overall cost to 120-150% of the face value. You have to guarantee that the import which does not have all of these costs at least as much so marking it up by 50% payable to a good cause is about as fair as it can get.
That is the point where you actually guarantee that it is not unfair price dumping via subsidized imports.
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Tuesday 18th October 2016 14:48 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: As a British IT worker....
The real problem is to let companies pay lower wages to immigrants which are the only ones willingly to accept it because of their lower life standards.
Just force them to pay the same wages whatever the employee comes from, and then you will see only the relatively few really highly skilled immigrants hired.
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Tuesday 18th October 2016 15:25 GMT Voland's right hand
Re: As a British IT worker....
The real problem is to let companies pay lower wages to immigrants
That is _NOT_ the problem.
That is irrelevant if the cost to the company is the same or higher.
An outsourcing company bringing in a worker on a temporary visa from somewhere warm and humid can and will pay HIGHER salary (because of an import visa restriction) than the locals and still laugh its arse off all the way to the bank because:
1. It has not paid any pension
2. It has not paid any loss of income or disability insurance.
3. It has not paid into any employee retention schemes such as share purchase or share options.
4. It has not had to provision for salary/career progression
The employee is similarly laughing all the way to the bank as he is likely to be on a stint short enough not to pay our tax rates and pay significantly lower income taxes in his home jurisdiction. In fact, some of them accept a "wink, wink" deal where they are paid higher rates to comply with import terms for a while and then put on leave or lower rate back home to make the math work out. They are still happy as they are employed and get more than they would get otherwise.
So, stop fixating on the damn salary the imports are being paid. As long as you continue fixating on it, the people who really make the money out of the various outsourcing scams will continue laughing their a*** all the way to the bank. The cost to them should be made equivalent if this market is to be made "fair" and I will not believe that there is an intention to make it fair until the work permit or short term visa fees do not start looking like taking into account 1+2+3+4 above.
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Tuesday 18th October 2016 15:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: As a British IT worker....
"I was the victim of such practices in as much as three Indian workers were moved in to replace two EU workers for half the price. I just wish that such sentiments as May's had been about when I lost my job."
But you didn't mind when other British jobs went to foreign workers as long as you could buy a cheap microwave and telly and washing machine? It's only your job going to people overseas because people want to pay less for stuff that is a problem? (If you're going to argue against this, everything in your house had better be made in Britain, or you're a hypocrite).
But, my main point, is that you need to upskill. Whatever it is you do, you're not good enough at it to command the extra premium that you seem to think you deserve versus Indian workers.
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Tuesday 18th October 2016 19:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: As a British IT worker....
I live overseas in a location with many Indian it workers and they don't have the skills in comparison to UK workers. In fact the level of confusion as to what they think they know, their difficulty in learning new skills or systems, and their love of bureacracy makes them quite difficult to work with. Just ask rbs about their downtime a few years ago. So I would tell uk plc to steer clear, because you won't like the long term outcome of this track of out sourcing.
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Tuesday 18th October 2016 20:20 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: As a British IT worker....
"vIf you're going to argue against this, everything in your house had better be made in Britain, or you're a hypocrite"
What a BS argument. Its simply not possible to buy much electrical or almost any electronic items made in the UK now. And don't blame the consumer - plenty of people are willing to pay for quality but the manufacturers want to maximise profits as much as possible so if they can sell the same device at the same price yet get it made at 1/4 the price in some chinese sweatshop then they will regardless of what the consumer thinks or wants. Eg: Japan didn't move production of its electronics to china because no one was buying japanese goods anymore. Even Dyson - supposedly a supporter of British industry - moved his production to China. Did the prices come down? Did they feck.
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Tuesday 18th October 2016 20:16 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: As a British IT worker....
"I just wish that such sentiments as May's had been about when I lost my job."
Seconded. And the article also tells you all you need to know about the 2 faced Vince Cable and the mendacious metro liberal democrats wrt immigration and actually giving a shit about the natives in general.
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Tuesday 18th October 2016 11:48 GMT Voland's right hand
Re: As a British IT worker....
While I agree with you and your sentiment, May's blanket ban method is counterproductive.
This can be governed by simple supply and demand.
Set a quota and auction it using the minimum salary as an indicator. Adjust the quota down if the salary results in less than the average pay for the profession as a whole (as reported by the HMRC and other stats sources).
THEN LEVY AN EXTRA IMPORT FEE AT 50% OF THE SALARY FOR A VISA. Payable directly in the higher education budget. FEE. Payable by the employer.
At that point, it will very much regulate itself.
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Wednesday 19th October 2016 08:50 GMT Edward Ashford
Re: As a British IT worker....
>> THEN LEVY AN EXTRA IMPORT FEE AT 50% OF THE SALARY FOR A VISA
Ironically, have you looked at what the Indian Govt will charge you as a "rich westerner" for buying a house and daring to live & work in India?
The Europe "Crisis" seems over rated - in 1987 I was working as a placement student in Germany, being paid in D Mark, in a technical department that was 50% British sub-contractors. Coming "back home" past the tender mercies of HM Customs was a bit of a drag but that's life - death and taxes.
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Tuesday 18th October 2016 19:15 GMT Anonymous Coward
"I wasn't aware India had such people. The ones I deal with are certainly not what I would class as 'experts'. Distinctly average, or worse and unable to think outside of a predetermined script."
So what you are saying is that they are the same as "IT experts" the world over. Including here.
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Tuesday 18th October 2016 12:37 GMT Anonymous Coward
Sorry to be blunt
But if you're worried about being, or have been, replaced by "cheating, cheap, unskilled labour at half the price" (your collective words above), then either you are in totally the wrong market or you are an unskilled cheat yourself.
Either way, you are not worth what you think you should be.
Sorry to break it to you. Blame it on them blacks, Poles, Tajikistanis, Welsh, whoever you want. They don't care and you'll still be in a miserable situation.
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Tuesday 18th October 2016 13:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Sorry to be blunt
You clearly haven't worked somewhere that's experienced this. Service levels to the customer drop through the floor but the management and bean counters don't care because it's cheaper to pay the SLA penalties than it is to provide a good service to the customer. Not being an "unskilled cheat" I got the hell out. Unfortunately history appears to be repeating itself where I am now, all in the name of profits paid to the few.
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Tuesday 18th October 2016 17:48 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Sorry to be blunt
> You clearly haven't worked somewhere that's experienced this.
You would be mistaken.
The first time I experienced this I was working for a multinational that decided Europeans and other so-called Westerners could be replaced with more affordable people, largely from the subcontinent. Personally, I saw merit in the idea. Unfortunately, they decided that they were going to offer salaries which were *below* the going rate in those people's countries of origin. Of course, the ones who took the opportunity were those who couldn't get employment back home, so yes, quality did suffer to put it mildly. As it happens, a lot of "Westerners" were let go, others amongst us were classed as critical personnel and stayed, with a payrise.
At various other times I worked alongside very capable chaps and girls from various places, the subcontinent included.
On one memorable occasion, when I was a consultant (£800/day + expenses) I was called in to take over from a rather disastrous attempt to outsource a project to an improbably cheap company in India (there are also good ones, and they're affordable but not rock-bottom cheap). We found out it was a manoeuvre by the rather underperforming UK-based team of aboriginals to try to make themselves look good and useful, by comparison to the Indians, in the eyes of the parent German company. We moved the project to France, which worked out cheaper and better, plus the frogs actually delivered the product, something that, in three years, the UK team had been unable to even come close to.
Be careful what you wish for, my friend.
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Tuesday 18th October 2016 14:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
As a former IT worker droid...
I retired some months ago. My employer could not get 'permission' to hire a replacement for me but was allowed to hire THREE Indians to do my old job. None of them had the skills needed to do my job so I was asked to stay on a few months to train them up. After I said that I'd need 3-4 years to train them peoperly I left on my planned date.
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Tuesday 18th October 2016 15:14 GMT Commswonk
Cui Bono?
Senior execs at India’s Tata Group, which owns 19 companies in the UK including outsourcing biz TCS, had previously said a possible “Brexit” would be “highly damaging” for business
Yeah, OK. Perhaps Theresa May has twigged that what is "good for business" isn't necessarily good for those who work for it or even the wider community. Tata's UK investments are made on the basis of "what is good for Tata", not on "what is best for the UK". Obviously Tata is not alone; any business investing / spending in the UK is not done as an act of charity for the UK and its electorate; it is done pursuit of the company's own interests.
Clearly there is a balance to be struck, and making things "actively bad" for business would probably not be a wise move but if Theresa May has acted to redress the balance more in favour of UK citizens (the electorate!) then all well and good IMHO.
Why should perfectly capable UK personnel have to sit around on JSA while imported personnel do the work, possibly receiving in - work benefits courtesy of the taxpayer in the process, as well as adding to the pressure on housing, healthcare and so on.
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Tuesday 18th October 2016 15:14 GMT Anonymous Coward
We soon won't need them
If all the Banks and Financial Institution move to Paris/Frankfurt the country will have thousands of IT people looking for work at rates similar to what they would pay the Indians. The likes of Nissan, Honda, BMW (Mini) and Toyota will soon follow the banks.
The reduced tax take from the City and industry (all employees pay Income Tax etc) will hit the country hard.
And there is the Daily Mail proclaiming that 'Food will be cheaper after Brexit'.
It might be cheaper but none of us will have the money to buy it because we won't have a job.
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Tuesday 18th October 2016 21:45 GMT Paul
Re: We soon won't need them
We will have jobs. once all the european mainlanders go home, there will be plenty of unskilled farm jobs available, restaurant staff, cleaners and other manual labouring jobs.
It will become economical to grow food in the UK again because of the week pound hence more farm jobs.
Fuel will go up, as it's priced in dollars.
The good thing is we'll all get fitter and healthier from working outside, or because we'll be walking or cycling more. And being poorer, we'll be eating less, which is good for us
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Wednesday 19th October 2016 09:56 GMT Mooseman
Re: We soon won't need them
"And there is the Daily Mail proclaiming that 'Food will be cheaper after Brexit'.
It might be cheaper but none of us will have the money to buy it because we won't have a job."
And the fact that we import around 40% of our food means the weak pound will make food prices go up.
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Tuesday 18th October 2016 18:42 GMT ProperDave
The big multinational I work for is pushing all development out to India. I've gone from being in a team of 40 in the UK to being just a team of 4 in the past 2 years, and most of the Dev teams in the US have already been let go for Indian replacements. What's funny though is all the Indian devs are terrible liabilities. Their grasp of application security is near non existent.
Most of the good Indian devs we have are contractors for a company in Bangalore. They're actually decent, but I've seen the budget and we're paying them almost the same salaries as if they were here - the saving in wages is negligible because they're contractors.
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Tuesday 18th October 2016 19:07 GMT Anonymous Coward
I wonder if they also use the same "technique" as used by a famous 3 letter company in the Netherlands where the minimum IT immigration worker salary for a work visa is made up of 35 hours minimum wage, cost of apartment/flights/living allowance and remainder paid in India as a "bonus" to avoid NL taxes?
Also worthy to note that the same 3 letter company was replacing Dutch employees with eastern European's, paying them 8-10k EURO at home, 500 EURO/ week in hotel expenses/living allowances (as these will be "expenses") and 0 tax in the Netherlands. None of them had the correct tax/residency status to work/stay in NL and were only "visiting for meetings" if questioned, all organised and approved on the strength of tax advice courtesy of another famous 3 letter tax avoidance specialist.
Suspect same questionable practices that are not open to normal employees/ small companies are being performed in UK by a big corporate near you.
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Tuesday 18th October 2016 19:16 GMT Anonymous Coward
Origin of workers
Sitting reading this as a UK IT guy that's in Lithuania for a business trip, having spent an hour yesterday talking to a local IT company that is concerned about customers outsourcing to Armenia. Puts an obvious but interesting spin on things, seeing the same worries happen here, in the part of the world the tabloids & assorted other fools would have us believe is a part of a problem. It's an obvious thing, and i'm absolutely sure readers on here already know it, but seeing it first hand brings it home.
You want to block immigration to protect skilled jobs, fine - block all immigration for people that don't have relevant skills, and don't base it on where they're from (unless it really is about race for some people). Unskilled immigration from here happened, I know people who went from here to London and paid their way through uni working in kitchens and cleaning, when local (British) people weren't prepared to do menial jobs as they "deserve" better but won't do anything about it. (Yes, I know people who think like that, too.). If certain politicians campaigned in some communities suggesting that it is "unfair" that EU migrants have an easier life than those from some Commonwealth countries (the reverse of what was certainly the case for years), then those politicians are at fault and playing the race card (& should face some sanction for that), not the people honestly trying to make a better life.
As for "fees payable directly in the higher education budget.", not a totally bad idea - provided the money is ring fenced for technical education, completely out of reach of media studies departments, civil service payroll, and the latest political wheeze.
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Wednesday 19th October 2016 17:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Origin of workers
> Sitting reading this as a UK IT guy that's in Lithuania for a business trip, having spent an hour yesterday talking to a local IT company that is concerned about customers outsourcing to Armenia
Yup, and if the business was going to the blokes down the road or in the next village they'd be complaining too (and so would I) because "they're not as good as us", "they just do it on the cheap", "we need to protect our jobs", etc., etc., etc. In the meanwhile, the World does not give a shit and just moves on without us.
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Tuesday 18th October 2016 19:25 GMT YARR
Whatever the globalist ideals of the LibDems, the job of the government is to run our country in the interests of the electorate (and the same goes for other countries). Trade deals are just business: you only agree a deal when it's mutually beneficial - the tax payer is not a charity.
The reason we offshore services is because it's more cost effective than doing the work ourselves. There is no point importing workers from abroad and paying them above national average wages for work which can either be done cheaper abroad or which we should be doing ourselves.
Trade deals should be about transferring goods not people. If this is some underhand scheme to export people from an overpopulated country, we should remember that we are also an overpopulated country where many people struggle to afford the rising cost of living.
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Tuesday 18th October 2016 21:31 GMT Commswonk
we are also an overpopulated country where many people struggle to afford the rising cost of living
If DC had made a proper job of representing that fact to the EU hierarchy then they might just have been more receptive to the idea of rethinking the mantra of the unfettered movement of people. That might just have made the outcome of the referendum different. IIRC the UK is close to being the most densely populated country in the EU, and it certainly is if the figures for England are considered in isolation. I might quibble about the generality of the "rising cost of living" but just putting a roof over their heads is becoming further and further detached from many peoples' capabilities, which is as good a reason for trying to minimise immigration as one is likely to find.
You haven't been following John McDonnell recently, then ...
If I don't sleep well tonight because of reading that I will hold you directly responsible. Grrr...
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Wednesday 19th October 2016 10:05 GMT Mooseman
How is immigration responsible for the rising cost of housing? there is plenty of housing but nobody wants to build "social housing" as it doesn't make the building developers huge profits like 4 bed properties do. There IS a lack of social housing, entirely due to the sell-off of council houses, blaming this on immigration is daft.
Yes Britain is densely populated, overpopulated? I don't think so. That sounds like a UKIP poster
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Wednesday 19th October 2016 13:33 GMT ProperDave
If you want to do a quick estimate on if we're over populated, a quick bit of maths will sort you out, and I did this recently.
Supposedly it takes 0.5 hectares of land to feed a single person for a whole year (cit. Google). The UK has 241,930 sq km of land, of which 71% is agricultural and a population of 64,430,428 (figures from CIA World Factbook).
If you bang these through a few equations you find that the UK can only physically feed 34,354,060, so about 46% of the current UK population would starve if International trade shut down.
If you apply the same formulas to the US or Canada, the US is capable of feeding about 800,million people, and Canada at about 120 million.
My maths don't take into account idle arrable land not currently being farmed, or the fishing industry.
These aren't perfect calculations. It's just a rough calculation done on a whim... I began applying the calculations to a number of countries and found some had healthy populations and others were dangerously overpopulated. I got bored after 30 mins of copy & pasting figures though, and I wasn't able to find good reliable sources of data.
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Wednesday 19th October 2016 13:48 GMT Loyal Commenter
There IS a lack of social housing, entirely due to the sell-off of council houses, blaming this on immigration is daft.
Exactly. This is why the government should be spending on social housing, which if nothing else, is a short term investment to take people receiving housing benefit (which costs the state a lot of money) and put them into low-rent accommodation that they won't need benefits to live in.
Of course, if you look at where the housing benefit money actually ends up, then you'll realise why the Tories will never build social housing (hint to the slower reader: it's them and their donors)
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Monday 24th October 2016 11:32 GMT Anonymous Coward
"This is why the government should be spending on social housing, which if nothing else, is a short term investment to take people receiving housing benefit (which costs the state a lot of money) and put them into low-rent accommodation that they won't need benefits to live in."
But this means spending far more than the cost of housing benefit when you look at the massive investment required to build new housing and then charge under market rent for it... Measures to control rent (such as limiting demand / immigration!) are a more sensible approach.
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Thursday 20th October 2016 13:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
"There IS a lack of social housing, entirely due to the sell-off of council houses, blaming this on immigration is daft."
Good, let's sell it all off. It's not the tax payers job to subsidise the property markets.
"Yes Britain is densely populated, overpopulated?"
Overpopulated - primarily due to too many immigrants. Hence the high cost of housing...
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Tuesday 18th October 2016 21:35 GMT Paul
I don't see why importing the work of remote labourers shouldn't incur the same import duty as physical goods. We pay VAT/tax on insurance and eBooks and digital music.
Just as we have switched from importing physical goods for music and video to digital, and other services which incur VAT, so companies who outsource workers to other countries and then operate their business remotely should incur import duty on that imported work.
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Wednesday 19th October 2016 08:37 GMT Anonymous Coward
Theresa May, maybe is just......
...... a closet racist and a secret Brexiteer, despite supporting a remain campaign whilst in Cameron's cabinet.
She surely blows & bends with the prevailing winds. She wants Global trade treaties with the world but cannot accept globalisation. (appeasing the Daily Fail readers as much)
I shouldnt be surprised if all the financial services (esp. Banking & Insurance companies of UK) who wants to set up shop in India (which is opening up rapidly in these matters) would then be required to hire ONLY Indians with a bare minimum of management top order and paid UK wages. Lets see how they then howl about restricitve trade practices by Indian govt.
Globalisation is GOODS & SERVICES. Not only tangible manufactured products. Labour(ers) & personnel is part of the mix. does anyone know how many Japanese "workers" (labour) work in their car factories in UK? Or, how many Indians did TATA import to work in JLR? OR Tata steel for that matter? Insignificant, I would say.
Cameron tried to appease the UKIP voters and he lost the gamble on a similar stance. As Thatcher famously said, you cant buck the market.
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Wednesday 19th October 2016 09:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
let look at the facts......
I work with a lot of Indian Techies TCS/Infosys/TechM and they are paid roughly the same level of pay as my NI payments (mine and my employer).... they get 20% of my salary. Their charge out rate through a contract is roughly £90/day. I do not like the word "protectionism" but..... I am far too expensive because a lot of them are also really smart, really keen and really young. I do not know what the future will bring..... but if myself and a whole host of my co-workers do not work the HMRC will start crying as their revenue dry up...... so will the school system, NHS and all of the other things we cherish. High levels of Taxation just drive jobs to lower taxation location..... so do we "dash to the bottom" and seriously start reducing our levels of social security, to poverty levels!
Do not know what the solution is but my fear is that the free-mark will destroy our socialist community as we run out of money to pay for it (we are currently borrowing this money for China and India) to prop up our social system currently.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
