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Thousands of low-skilled foreign workers from outside the European Union will no longer be allowed to work in Britain under a new points-based immigration system unveiled today.
The new system, announced by the home secretary Charles Clarke, will favour foreigners who have skills that the British workforce lacks.
It will phase out migration schemes that have allowed employers such as farmers and hoteliers to bring in low-skilled workers from outside the EU. Such schemes accounted for around 32,000 migrants to the UK in 2004.
The government believes that employers can now draw on migrant workers from eastern Europe who have been free to work in the UK since May 2004. Since then, 329,000 people from the EU accession countries have registered to work in the UK.
A paper on the new system explained that the number of migrants workers allowed under the seasonal agricultural workers scheme will be cut substantially before the scheme is phased out altogether.
Trade unions say that such programmes encourage low wages and poor working conditions.
Employers who have relied on migrant workers schemes will be urged to draw on temporary workers under a new youth mobility scheme, as well migrants from eastern Europe.
They will only be allowed to recruit low-skilled migrants from outside the EU to work in the UK in exceptional circumstances, for areas where there is an agreed shortage.
Such low-skilled workers would require an open return ticket and have to give their biometric details in a bid to prevent them disappearing into the black market.
They could only stay for a maximum of 12 months and would not be allowed to bring spouses or children with them.
The paper said: "Employers are expected to recruit from within the UK and EU before looking to migrant labour from outside the EU."
Skilled workers will be judged on a points system that favours youth, qualifications, previous earnings and firm job offers.
Tiers
The new system will consolidate more than 80 existing work and study immigration schemes into five tiers:
· Tier one: highly skilled individuals such as doctors, scientists or entrepreneurs, who will be the only group able to come to Britain without a job offer.
· Tier two: skilled workers with a job offer such as nurses, teachers or engineers.
· Tier three: low-skilled workers filling specific temporary labour shortages such as builders for a particular project.
· Tier four: students.
· Tier five: "youth mobility" and temporary workers, such as working holidaymakers, musicians coming to perform, sportspeople coming to compete, volunteers or non-preaching religious workers. It will apply to those aged 18 to 30 and will allow them to stay for up to two years.
Mr Clarke said: "Today's announcement sets out the government's policy to deliver a firm but fair, simpler, more transparent and more rigorous system which will benefit our economy and protect our borders.
"Crucially, it will allow us to ensure that only those people with the skills the UK needs come to this country, while preventing those without these skills applying."
He explained that under the scheme, foreign workers or students would need a British sponsor to vouch for them before being allowed to work.
Existing immigration routes, such as one run by the Department of Health for postgraduate doctors and dentists, would end as the new system is phased in, the Home Office said.
Talks
Mr Clarke said the new regime would not take effect "overnight", but added that constructive talks had already been established between industry and the government.
"The system should be focused primarily on bringing in migrants who are highly skilled or to do key jobs that cannot be filled from the domestic labour force or from the EU," he said.
In the students category, colleges and universities will have to be on a list of approved sponsors in a bid to crack down on people who apply to bogus colleges and then disappear.
Damian Green, the Conservative immigration spokesman, said that his party had long called for some kind of points system: "I hope this works. The underlying question is whether this can be delivered effectively.
"There is a long history of headline-grabbing initiatives from the Home Office where they have talked tough on immigration and the delivery doesn't come," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
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