The Queen Has Her Say on UK Immigration – New British Immigration Policy Revealed

The Queen was activated and made her speech today to the House of Lords and outlined the new coalition government’s plans. Immigration made it into the Queen’s Speech, as expected.

Here’s what the Queen said about UK Immigration:

“My Government will limit the number of non European Union economic migrants entering the United Kingdom and end the detention of children for immigration purposes.”

No surprises there as the Lib-Con coalition is doing exactly what they’ve pledged to do: cut non-EU migration into the UK – a policy we don’t support.

However, things got a little interesting when Downing Street expanded on what the Queen had to say and released this information:

The Government has agreed that there should be an annual limit on the number of non-EU economic migrants admitted into the UK to live and work. This is one of the ways we will reduce net migration back to the levels of the 1990s – tens of thousands not hundreds of thousands.

While it is important that the UK attracts the brightest and the best people who can make a real difference to the country’s economic growth, immigration is too high. In the long term we should up-skill British workers so that we do not need as many economic migrants to fill jobs.

The Government will consult with business and other interested sectors before taking final decisions on the implementation mechanisms for these limits and the level at which they should be set.

This feeds into the analysis we made last week. With language like that it’s clear that they aren’t in a hurry to put the quota into place and even if they do implement the quota, it may not be as low as we all fear. It sounds like business has an opportunity to make the case that non-EU migration is very necessary to the economic health of Britain.

So, I don’t think anything will change for quite some time and if it does – I doubt it will affect too many people. This is great news for all us Anglophiles out there that want to settle in the UK. If you have plans to, then by all means move forward, but haste may be on your side.