Immigration Policy Reforms: Equality, Trade, and Geographical Balance

This essay provides recommendations for policy reforms in UK immigration, addressing geographical imbalances, supporting equality, and enhancing the nation's trade balance. The first recommendation emphasizes geographical flexibility through a sub-state or devolved system to resolve economic disparities across UK regions, enabling local control over work migration policies while maintaining central government oversight on visa issuance. The second reform focuses on supporting equality by strictly enforcing non-discrimination policies for immigrants in employment, housing, and services, countering biases prevalent among the local population. The third change suggests aligning immigration strategy with trade objectives, leveraging immigrants' country-specific knowledge to boost service exports and attract international students by creating post-study work opportunities. These reforms aim to create a comfortable and successful environment for immigrants, enhance the UK's economic condition, and ensure the well-being of its people.

Running head: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR POLICY REFORMS
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR POLICY REFORMS
Name of the Student
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Author Note

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Immigration is a crucial policy for every country (Hollifield, Martin and Orrenius
2014). There are many implications that immigration policies have on the economy, the
public services and on the different communities of a country. Immigrants have mainly
brought various benefits to the culture and economy of a country (Griffith and Morris 2017).
However, there are certain transformations that is required in the immigration policies to
regain the lost trust in the government. Hence, as a policy advisor of the UK there are certain
recommendations that are necessary for immigration policy reform of the country. This essay
will discuss those recommendations and analyse the changes that needs to be made in the
policies.
The first change that could be made is that the immigration policy of the country
should address the geographical imbalances that are occurring in the economy (Coyle 2016).
It is necessary to build a geographical flexibility in the system of immigration, so that the
economic imbalance in the nations and regions in UK is resolved (Burrell 2016). This change
can be brought about in two-ways, firstly by adopting a system of sub-state in which the
control would remain with the central government but the immigration rules can vary across
different nations and regions. Secondly, a devolved system could also be adopted which
would ensure that new powers are given to the sub-states on how to build their own
immigration rules (Walsh 2014). Under both these system, the power and responsibility of
issuing the visas and non-labour migration would be with the central government (McCollum
and Findlay 2015). However, new changes would be made in the work migration policies in
different nations and regions of UK. Both the devolved system and the sub-state system can
help in resolving the geographical imbalances in immigration (Avendaño 2014). According to
the current system of immigration, the skilled immigrants mostly settles in London, as the
skill levels and the salary structure is fixed and the wages are higher than any other region in
UK. Other regions are unable to attract skilled immigrants because they lack the

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infrastructure to do so. A geographical change in the migration policy could help the other
nations to get new powers and stabilize their economy by which they can attract more skilled
immigrant workers (Chang 2016). There have been researches that specify that the share of
immigrants is the largest in London (Sá 2015). This further emphasizes that London has the
most number of skilled workers from overseas and other nations do lack in that sector.
Hence, a change in the immigration policy change ensure that that all areas and nations in the
UK receive an almost equal distribution of skilled immigrant workers. The changes in the
system would also help the regions in getting more control over their own immigration
policies. This can enable the local people to contribute more in the managing of migration.
The costs and benefits of migration can become more practical in the long run. People
applying for such sub-state visas would need employers of the region to sponsor them. If in
any scenario, the immigrants change their employer, they would need to apply again for the
visa to the Home Office. This would help in the prevention of overstaying of immigrants and
also retain the appointment of illegal immigrants in UK (Aleksynska and Tritah 2013).
The second reform that could be made is that the immigration strategy should support
equality in the nation. UK is deemed to be the most unequal nation in the whole Western
Europe (Leddy-Owen 2016). The immigrants who are non-European face lots of economic
instability and the European immigrants are underpaid and overqualified. The government
should support the integration of immigrants in the labour market and address the inequality
issue in the nation (Connolly, Lucio and Marino 2013). The transfer of the responsibility of
the checking of the immigrants to the employer, the landlords and banks should also be
followed by strict instructions that no immigrant is discriminated in any way (Meunier et al.
2013). Thus should be done because there are many media reports and other evidences which
support the fact that many immigrants are being treated in a bad way and being bullied by
employers, landlords and even in other areas (Bidisha 2013). British people are always

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preferred during any job application or while renting a house. They do not allow the people
without British passports to apply for any kind of job or house application (Miranda and Zhu
2013). This becomes a problem for the non-European people as they are unable to get
employed or even if they are employed they are not treated well or even harassed in the work
place. This makes them deteriorate in terms of work and hence they get bullied more since
they are it able to reach the standard of work in the company. Other cases have also been
found where travel agencies deny the immigrants any booking for holidays or even cancels
the online bookings of European citizens who reside in other countries. Landlords made
different rules for the immigrants who showed interest in renting a house or denied them
access altogether (Kulu et al. 2015). This discrimination is due to the non-acceptance of
immigrants in UK by the local people. The population in UK are biased towards their own
people and hence the practices of discrimination and even racism takes over in case of the
immigrants. They resent the idea of immigration as they feel that immigrants are based in
their country to take away everything good from the nation. Thus, thus sentiment that prevails
among the people of the nation becomes a major threat for the immigrants (Morad and
Haque). Therefore, it is necessary that strict policies are made to ensure that even though
such sentiments cannot evaporate within a short time, however, the people would stop the
discrimination because of the law that is applied (Lomer 2017). Without a change in the
policy the discrimination will always prevail and immigrants will not be able to operate
according to their full potential in the country and always feel threatened by the locals.
The third change that could occur in the immigration policy is that changes should be
made in the UK immigration strategy to support the trade balance of the nation. Many
researchers have found out that immigrants can help in increasing the service exports of the
country by providing knowledge about the country-specific markets (Wadsworth et al. 2016).
However, the current immigration policies are not well-equipped to meet the trade needs of

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the country (Ottaviano, Peri and Wright 2015). It is advisable to introduce or bring about a
change in the new policy to form it in such a way that it contributes majorly to the boost of
exports of the country. The policy can be made in coordination with the Department for
International Trade and the Home Office to build a concrete and well-equipped policy
(Bowen and Wu 2013). The policy should also hold certain policies that can attract
international students into their country. Thus could be done if the nation can establish good
work opportunities after the completion of studies and also introduce such subjects which can
attract the international students (Chang and Kono 2014). The government should also
concentrate on the different communities of immigrants that have established themselves in
the country and make use of their country-specific knowledge to understand the trade routes
of other countries and to spread their services in such routes (Dustmann and Frattini 2014).
These people can help in the formation of business plans and expand the trades among
different countries and trade centres. This would help in expanding the potential of export of
the companies of UK without the traditional barriers of language and culture (Marino,
Penninx and Roosblad 2015). Young people or international students can be hired during the
course of their education into these companies to help with the exporting plan. This is also
beneficial for the students as they have a source of income during their study years as well.
The focus of this policy change would be to remove the obstacles that normally come with
doing trade with other countries that is language and cultural barriers, and could also include
certain projects like research of the market, analytics of social media, development of the
brand and online marketing (Peters 2015). The change, once initiated, should be piloted with
a selected group of students from selected universities and a minor number of local people,
and depending on the success of the pilot, the whole policy can be sustained (Dhingra,
Ottaviano and Sampson 2015). However, it is not necessary that the selected pilot group will
only be comprised of students, but they can also include other individuals who possesses the

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appropriate skills and the potential to make this policy a success. Hence, it can be said that
this policy change is necessary to develop the economy of the country. As the economy of the
nation rises, so will the people of the nation be able to develop themselves.
Hence, it can be concluded that proper policy reforms are needed to manage the
immigration of UK for the success of the economy. The recommendation for changes given
above could help the immigrants in establishing a comfortable and successful place in the
nation and also help UK to develop and enhance the economic condition, also keeping in
mind the comfort of its people.

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