UK immigration: Keir Starmer’s government wants to crack down on overseas hiring by tech and engineering firms

In potentially bad news for aspiring Indian tech professionals, Keir Starmer’s government in the UK is set to crack down on tech and engineering firms hiring overseas, asking independent migration advisers to look into the sector’s reliance on skilled worker visas.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has asked the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) to review the sectors’ reliance on skilled worker visas. Cooper said there was a need to understand why some key professions were so reliant on international recruitment.

The Minister of Internal Affairs drew attention to specialists from the information and telecommunications technology sector, as well as engineers, who are the first to benefit from work visas.

The Home Secretary wrote in a letter to the MAC that the government “is very grateful for the contribution that people from all over the world make to our economy… the system needs to be managed and controlled”.

Yvette Cooper said the Government intended to reduce migration by aligning immigration policy with skills policy to create a fairer and more coherent approach to the labour market.

It asked the MAC to produce a report within nine months on how the immigration system “can be used more effectively” to encourage employers to focus on recruiting domestic workers.

UK visa applications down

The number of overseas workers and students applying for visas to the UK fell after visa restrictions were introduced by the previous Conservative Party government of Rishi Sunak.

The number of workers and their family members applying for skilled, health and care and study visas fell by more than a third to 91,300 in July compared with a year earlier, The Guardian reported.

Oxford University’s Migration Observatory has estimated that net migration will continue to fall significantly over the next five years, reaching around 350,000 in 2030. This will be partly due to increased numbers of people leaving the UK, a fall in the number of international students coming to the UK and a fall in the number of vacancies in the private sector, the report added.

The total number of people applying to come to the UK to work as skilled workers, healthcare workers or to study fell from 143,000 in July 2023 to 91,300 in July 2024 – a 36 per cent drop.