Ed Davey has urged Keir Starmer to create a new visa route so that Americans seeking to flee the Trump presidency.
The Lib Dem leader said it should target wealthy Americans so they can “bring their money and their skills” to the UK.
UK immigration lawyers said earlier this week that they have received a spike in inquiries from “mobile, wealthy individuals in tech, law, and the arts” who are “worried about socially conservative policies that Trump could introduce once in office” so they are wanting to move to other countries, such as Britain.
In PMQs, he asked: “An idea for the chancellor to grow the economy: as President-elect Trump prepares to take office next week, there are reports that a number of wealthy, highly-skilled Americans are looking to come to the UK for fear of what President-elect Trump will do to their country.
“But because the Conservatives so broke the immigration system, many of them are finding there is no visa that they can apply for.
“Now I know the Prime Minister is rightly seeking to reduce immigration from the record highs of the Conservatives, but does he agree: if people like this want to come to our country, to bring their money and their skills, so we can grow our economy and pay for our public services, they should be able to?”
I won’t hold my breath but I will be keeping an eye on this. I had been eligible for a HPI visa and fully intended to apply, but life got in the way while I was saving up and the clock ran out.
I’m a licensed architect in the states and the only thing keeping me from becoming a chartered architect via reciprocity is it requires a visa. It’s tough convincing a company to sponsor me via the skilled worker route because I’m not already chartered. Kind of a chicken-and-egg scenario. So this visa route would genuinely help people like me.
Yeah, Starmer’s reply utterly dodges the issue. While there are good grounds for making some immigration easier he has said he’ll get the numbers down, so any slackening of the laws now would get him (another) kicking by the right wing media.
I could see a media frenzy being manufactured over rich Yanks coming in with their money and making housing even less affordable.
True but the way Ed Davey is pitching it, the numbers would be limited. We’d probably not hate them far more for just being rich Yanks.