UK employment visa row: Is India Inc protesting too much?

LONDON: When high-rolling businesses with markets to conquer on the cheap and cynical politicians with constituencies to please come together, conflict is always around the corner waiting to erupt at the slightest sign of what the other side might see as a “provocation’’. But they also know where to draw the line and get over it eventually, though it doesn’t look pretty while it lasts. The current row between Indian businesses and the British government over proposals to impose further restrictions on UK employment visa rules for non-EU countries, including India, is a classic case of mutual interests temporarily going awry. Hopefully, it will be resolved with a bit of face-saving “give-and-take” on both sides but, meanwhile, it is not looking good and threatening to overshadow a high-level conference on India-UK trade in London on Wednesday. This issue will be the elephant in the room when leading Indian and British business leaders gather in the opulent surroundings of Taj St James’ Court hotel on July 8 to discuss the “Future of UK-India Economic Relations’. The Confederation of Indian Chambers of Commerce (CII) is fuming. It has shot off a protest arguing that the proposed changes would“have the effect of restricting mobility of skilled professionals into UK" and “undermine" the contributions Indian companies are making to the British economy. “We understand the concern on immigration and skills shortage in the UK. This is a huge opportunity for India and the UK to work together in strengthening skills capability and developing a globally competitive workforce. We must not undermine the contributions of Indian companies in the UK, who are keen to partner in this process,” said its president SumitMazumdar in a statement. Other big guns have been lining up to denounce what the Indian side sees as the latest in the seasonal drip-drip of newer and stricter regulations. [caption id=“attachment_2318206” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File/Reuters[/caption] Prashant Jhawar, Chairman of CII’s India Business Forum in the UK., warned that the new rules “would hit the real stakeholders in the India-UK economic relationship – both Indian and British companies’’ and urged the British government to get a “better understanding’’ of what was at stake. “We will approach the UK Government for a business meeting to apprise them on this issue.” At the centre of the dispute is the British Government’s move to restrict the availability of work visas for skilled migrants and Intra-Company Transfers ICTs)–a route which it says many foreign (not just Indian) companies use to bring in their own staff instead of hiring local people. The companies, on the other hand,claim that they need in-house people who have expertise needed to run their operations in a foreign country. Without the benefit of their intimate knowledge of the company’s culture and functioning its efficiency would suffer. “There are over 800 Indian companies operating in the UK, contributing to the overall economy and innovation, paying taxes, hiring locally and upskilling local talent. While several companies offer their own training programs, but when it comes to high-skilled work and specialized knowledge of company operations, the Intra-Company Transfer route becomes crucial. Many companies avail the ICT visa and their operations may be severely disrupted,” Mazumdar said in his protest note. The trouble is that there is no way of testing as to which staff is essential and without whose on-site participation a venture would collapse. Especially, in this era when everything can be remote-controlled and there’s really no need for 24/7 physical presence– barring exceptionally complex technological jobs. It is also not always easy to define what is not a “skilled job’’ that domestic workers can’t do. This allows employers to claim “skills shortage’’ in a certain sector and bring in workers from countries of their own origin. Take Indian restaurant owners. They were up in arms when new rules preventing chefs from being recruited from the Indian sub-continent were introduced. Street protests were held across Britain. They argued that in order to serve authentic Indian food they needed chefs who had an intimate understanding of Indian cooking and they were available only in the subcontinent. Without them, the Indian restaurant industry in the UK would collapse, they said raising the spectre of “thousands of restaurants’’ closing down and ruining livelihoods. I remember a spokesman famously saying, “We are looking at a real curry crisis.” But nothing happened. The fact is that Britain has more than its share of Indian and Pakistani origin chefs who can be as “authentic”‘as those back home.The “shortage’’ argument is a red-herring which is invoked to bring cheap labour from Delhi, Karachi and Dhaka. Often, they are owners’ family members or friends. I know restaurant owners who bring in waiters from India and designate them as chefs. Meanwhile, it is important to remember that for all the seductive packaging, the invitation to invest in Britain comes with strings attached. When foreigners are allowed to set up businesses here, there’s an implicit understanding that besides bringing in investment and expertise they would generate local employment.And this is not something unique to Britain. That’s the fundamental objective behind inviting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) around the world including India. Any FDI which doesn’t benefit local communities in addition to contributing to the wider national economy makes no sense; and meets with public opposition.Indian government routinely justifies FDI clearances–often even controversial ones and in the teeth of opposition from environmentalists and other interested groups including domestic businesses–on the ground that the particular project would generate local employment and help development. Coming back to the proposed new rules, they include cutting down job visas for skilled workers; reducing the time a sector can claim to have a skills shortage; and introducing a ‘skills levy’ on businesses who recruit foreign workers. So what’s the provocation for this latest clampdown? Immigration has become an extremely hot political potato in recent years with an increasing number of voters, including long-settled Indian immigrants, citing it as among their top concerns.This has sparked a scramble among political parties to show who is “tougher” on checking further influx. The rise of the anti-immigrant United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) which took away votes from both the Tories and Labour in the May general elections has put more pressure on the two mainstream parties. Moreover, in a way David Cameron’s ruling Tory party is a victim of its own cynical opportunism. It fought the 2010 elections accusing Labour of being soft on the issue and grandly promised to bring the annual numbers from “hundreds of thousands” to “tens of thousands”. So began a frenzy of new regulations with the axe falling all across immigrant categories–foreign students, families of settled immigrants wanting to visit them, casual visitors, and potential economic migrants. Yet when figures came in, they showed that net migration had actually gone up slightly than coming down! Hence the panic. So old routes which were claimed to have been plugged are being revisited to plug them further to please voters. But at this stage, they are only proposals and the government has referred them to the Migration Advisory Body, an independent body, which will study them and make recommendations after taking account of objections to them. And the MAB doesn’t always oblige the government. So, is India Inc jumping the gun?