Working at Amazon

Pacifico

Do you have evidence to support this thesis?. Lets compare the UK with our uncontrolled immigration and the US and Australia with their highly controlled systems - the US and Australia have a higher growth rate. So what evidence do you have a controlled immigration system damages business and markets?

IronGiant

I thought it was more to do with the Government finding ever more creative ways to massage the figures

Trollslayer

You wouldn't last long as a test engineer with a failure analysis technique like that.

Pacifico

So you have evidence that controlled immigration harms businesses? - or just puffing?

fluxo

In order to have an interesting discussion it’s necessary to have a shared basis of agreed “truths”. It seems that you are determined to contest what any reasonable person would regard as self-evident.

We can have different opinions on whether the proposed controls will be good or bad for businesses. What should not be in doubt is that they will constrain businesses. You cannot limit migration without restricting some business’ access to some employee and that is a constraint. This is so obvious that I don’t understand why you persist in arguing the point.

Sonic and others agree on controls and, whilst I don’t agree with them, they are at least reasonable in accepting this basic fact.

Trollslayer

And you did it again.

fluxo

The “restrict markets” bit ought to clear. The other bit (damaging businesses) is more of a personal belief. I tend to believe that it’s those who run businesses who are best placed to choose who to hire and government interference with that is damaging. I do accept that there are other views, though.

IronGiant

Assuming meaningful means effective then the most effective system would allow any business to employ anybody they want from any part of the world whether Europe or elsewhere, while limiting/controlling speculative travel.  This is why I don't agree with a £30K "cap", unless they expand the exceptions list to include a lot more than just nurses and the like.

fluxo

I do find the cap puzzling. It seems a bit arbitrary.

Pacifico

Well Businesses will obviously be favor of whatever the cheapest option is for them - That doesn't mean that what is beneficial for an individual business is beneficial for the wider economy. One of the negatives with allowing unrestricted immigration is that it discourages companies from investing in training for their existing workforce and thus raising productivity  -  and as the economist Paul Krugman said :

"Productivity isn't everything, but, in the long run, it is almost everything. A country's ability to improve its standard of living over time depends almost entirely on its ability to raise its output per worker.”