The Conservative government has put the “final nail in the coffin” of successive pledges to drastically reduce net migration, by dropping the salary threshold for migrants settling in the UK from £35,800 to £25,600 — with a salary exemption as low as £20,480 for some roles from December 1st.
The government quietly made the change on Thursday as part of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s ‘Australia-style’ immigration plans, with Oxford University’s Migration Observatory flagging the new thresholds later in the week, according to The Telegraph.
In 2011 as home secretary, Theresa May had enforced a rule that skilled migrant workers would have to leave the country after six years unless they earnt a minimum of £35,800. The measure was put in place in an effort to drive down migration from outside of the European Union, with then-Prime Minister David Cameron unable to stop immigration from the EU due to the bloc’s free movement regime.
Now, that threshold is more than £10,000 lower at £25,600. The figure is even lower — just £20,480 — if the migrant is working a job where the government has decided there is a shortage of British workers. The Migration Observatory’s deputy director, Rob McNeill, called it “the final nail in the coffin of the net migration target”.
“They are acknowledging that the bluntest of all the instruments the Government used to get to that target of tens of thousands has been kicked into touch,” Mr McNeill said, according to The Telegraph.