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摘要

Immigration law has become a topic of great political sensitivity of late and new rules, to come into force next April, will make it harder than ever for employers to retain the skilled migrant workers on which the industry has traditionally relied. This is not good news for the construction industry, which is already dealing with skill shortages and needs to resource growth over the next few years. The problem does not impact workers who have the right to work here by reason of European Economic Area (EEA) citizenship, so the issue is not about the archetypical Polish builder. The CITB predicts that 44,690 new workers will be needed each year and it is where employers need skilled workers such as engineers, surveyors, project managers and others that the changes will bite. Major projects could face particular difficulties. The ability to employ migrant workers in these roles is becoming materially more difficult. Such skilled roles are currently eligible for sponsorship by employers under Tier 2 of the points based system. This means that employers have the option to recruit workers from outside the EEA into these jobs, provided that they can demonstrate that it wasn't possible to recruit a resident worker to do the job in question - not a problem where there are acknowledged skills shortages. A significant number of employees are therefore sponsored in these roles. However, the forthcoming changes will make it difficult for sponsored workers in these roles to stay in the UK in the long term.