Minnesänger wrote:

From my experience if you apply for a visa for a London based job or studies, you are required to show a higher level of earnings. Not sure what the new figures will be though.

If we are basing immigration on earnings (if, because it isnt always necessary) then this does make sense due to the excessively high cost of living in London.
I wasnt there for long, only a few years, my earnings generally tracked the national average salary and it wasnt sustainable.
I would argue 30k for a single person in London in 2020 will probably still be a stretch and certainly not delivering the lifestyle that salary should.

If self sustainability is the metric immigration is to be based on location really should be considered.

Again, it is an if.

Funkstain wrote:

it's just that brexiteers who voted on the basis of immigration didn't always hear that.

Yeah, sweet sweet irony.

Funkstain wrote:

As a country we should be looking to increase immigration, especially of the right types to fit our shortages -

Scotland is routinely ignored in the immigration debate. Scotland needs more immigration, not less, but this is inconvenient for Westminister.

Genuine question. What is it about Scotland that has left them so much shorter of needed immigrants than England and I assume Wales?

LivDiv wrote:

Minnesänger wrote:

From my experience if you apply for a visa for a London based job or studies, you are required to show a higher level of earnings. Not sure what the new figures will be though.

If we are basing immigration on earnings (if, because it isnt always necessary) then this does make sense due to the excessively high cost of living in London. I wasnt there for long, only a few years, my earnings generally tracked the national average salary and it wasnt sustainable. I would argue 30k for a single person in London in 2020 will probably still be a stretch and certainly not delivering the lifestyle that salary should. If self sustainability is the metric immigration is to be based on location really should be considered. Again, it is an if.

Yeah, it's about whether immigrants can sustain themselves. 

It's worth mentioning, I may have made a mistake here, I'm not sure. Given my work history, I've done a lot of work with UK (and EU) Visas for Chinese students. There is absolutely 100% a higher set of financial requirements for London-based students compared to the rest of the country. The possible mistake comes in the assumption this would apply to work visas as well - I assume this is the case, but I could be wrong.

Cool, thanks Pop.

Yeah, cheers for the answers both.


Seems like at least some of that can be levelled at the devolved government.
Education for example. A high level of education is great but is it appropriate for the needs of the country?

Funkstain wrote:

All of this should be taken with the context: - Immigration is vital to our economy: we have a severe skills shortage that will take a decade or more to address through education and training (from when that actually starts - nothing on horizon) - As a country we should be looking to increase immigration, especially of the right types to fit our shortages - The only reason it's "unfair" to non EU immigrants is that exactly as Cinty said, as soon as public sentiment goes against immigration, the government clamps down where it can, which means non EU people. It's fucking useless: historically had a tiny impact on overall net migration whilst depriving the country of keen, capable people So "being fair to the government" still means retaining utter contempt for everything they stand for

Agree with all of this. Hopefully we can avoid something as bat-shit as the US's X per country system / visa lottery backup. I know that's mainly for permanent residence but it's such an awful system and switches one type of unfairness (non-EU? Get fucked!) for another type of unfairness (from a high population country? Get fucked!). 

And, as much as I pointed out that Scotland is considered in current thinking and policy, it's also clear that it's not enough and I hope Scotland can have its needs met. I wasn't trying to dismiss the points raised about Scotland, just correcting the apparent assumption that Scotland is being completely ignored - it isn't, and there's already policies in place to cover Scotland's needs, they just don't work properly due to certain issues (the aforementioned salary requirements, for example). Part of me thinks the salary drop wasn't just a Brexit-based economic prediction, but also to cut the legs from Scottish calls for devolved visa processing. All guesswork, though.

This is genius. I mean absolutely inspiring and I feel happy that people like this exist in the world

Oh my!

In the most fantastic bit of irony, Brexit, naturally, works on CET, so it's at 11pm in the UK.

I'm truly sorry for you all, and hope you don't get completely screwed by the Tories, but you probably will.

There will be a lot of gloating idiots over the coming weeks saying things like “See? Told you all that project fear stuff was nonsense,” because nothing immediately goes to shit.

Instead, we can look forward to everything going to shit over New Year as we actually leave the EU, rather than tonight as we leave in name only.

Bollocks to it all.

Australia are in Eurovision, I think we will be fine.
I suspect we might not win mind.

Glad im in lanzarote at the minute.