

Brexit Immigration Proposals Floated At the 2018 Tory Party Conference in Birmingham, party leader and Prime Minister, Theresa May, set out her vision of a post Brexit immigration landscape. The key vision, and perhaps the announcement that affects UK business the most was the status of new EU workers who businesses wished to hire after the UK leaves the European Union. Currently, there is a two-tiered system. If a business wishes to hire a worker who is not British, then European nationals can hired almost as easily as British nationals, whereas Non EU migrants will need to be sponsored by the UK business, which can be an onerous burden on the employer. In particular, the non EU migrant can only be hired if his role is particularly skilled and full time. (there is a list of allowed job titles). EU nationals can be hired for any role, skilled or otherwise and part or full time. Teresa May announced that post Brexit, new EU nationals coming to work in the UK will get no special treatment as compared to migrants from non-EU countries. This will mean EU nationals cannot be hired for low skilled work. The new reality will bite certain employers and certain sectors very hard, in particular those sectors that have large numbers of low skilled EU workers, retail, hospitality, particularly hotels and restaurants, factories and warehouses ,may well struggle. We await further developments.