How Will the Impact of COVID-19 Change Future of Immigration to the UK?
Since the outbreak of coronavirus, the public has become increasingly aware of how much society – from care homes to farms – depends on lower paid workers. Press coverage throughout the pandemic has, in numerous instances, exposed the dangers that these workers are faced with – often due to insufficient personal protective equipment. Also, it has highlighted their harsh working environments and meagre remuneration. Recently, producers of food, supermarket employees and delivery drivers have been categorized as ‘key’ workers. Lots of these lower-salaried jobs, which have been recognised as crucial during the crisis, rely on migrant staff heavily. Coronavirus has arrived just when the United Kingdom is about to change its immigration rules, once the transition period for Brexit finishes. In light of these facts, it is prudent to consider how will the impact of COVID-19 change future immigration.
Immigration concerns had subsided already among the British public, well before coronavirus reared its ugly head. When the referendum on Brexit took place in 2016, over forty percent of people regarded immigration as a vital issue facing the United Kingdom. However, this figure dropped to roughly ten percent just before the pandemic struck. Since coronavirus started, immigration has been mentioned rarely by politicians. A recent poll suggested that just five percent of people regard immigration as a key issue facing the United Kingdom. Rather, the public is currently worried about the economy, the NHS and the pandemic – to exclusion of virtually everything else.
Migrants are represented disproportionately in several important industries. They make up twenty-two percent in necessary goods and food, twenty-two percent in social care and health, seventeen percent in transport, and twenty percent in communication and utilities. This compares with their fourteen percent share of the population overall. Often, research highlights that the British public likes some categories of migrants more than others, particularly higher-skilled migrants as opposed to lower-skilled ones. The latest studies indicate that over fifty percent of migrant key workers from the EU would have failed to qualify for visas, under existing immigration proposals.
The coronavirus pandemic could persuade politicians that certain sectors have strategic importance and require priority access to an adequate workforce. This would enable these sectors to deliver vital services and goods, in the event of another outbreak. Potentially, this might affect the way that immigration policy is formulated after Brexit. However, the existing crisis offers few clues on the more subtle issues, like which sectors ought to be classed as ‘strategic’ under the immigration rules.
Indeed, even prior to coronavirus, studies into immigration opinions revealed that the supposed disdain for migrants who are lower-skilled was less straightforward than previously thought. This research showed that people viewed skill level differently to politicians, and that their attitudes were motivated by how much they believed migrants contributed to the United Kingdom. The amount migrants contributed was not measured by the tax they pay alone, but by other factors – like filling shortages in the labour market, including lower-skilled industries.
Of course, there is no escaping the fact that staff have been made redundant in other sectors, during the current crisis, so there is a greater propensity than normal to recruit from domestic labour markets. However, although this appears to be an obvious solution at first glance, historically – even during times of high unemployment – lots of businesses have still opted to hire from overseas. There are several complex explanations for this, however some data shows that employers prefer to recruit migrants for roles that are more hazardous, or more physically demanding.
Predicting which of these outcomes are more likely to arise is not easy and requires a large amount of subjective analysis. For this reason, there are bound to be further discussions about these matters over the months to come. The most notable impact of coronavirus might be that these subtleties in public attitudes are acknowledged in the wider debate. In turn, this could mean that we begin to discuss preferences and opinions about particular jobs, instead of the general distinction between higher-skilled and lower-skilled migrant workers. Likewise, the public’s attitude towards ‘contribution’ might have altered, with more respect for certain roles – like those in the necessary goods and food supply chains.
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