STANDING UP TO THE MOB

摘要

Immigration has been a divisive political issue throughout my lifetime and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Few weeks go by without extensive newspaper and television coverage of it, often conducted in inflammatory language. The underlying presumption behind the great bulk of such media stories is that immigration is a problem and action is required to tackle it. Yet when I put down the tabloid newspapers, switch off the radio or TV and look at migration from a construction perspective, I see a different picture. First, I am conscious of the global context in which the industry works: successful companies compete internationally to recruit the skilled employees they need. Built environment consultancies that tried to meet their skills needs from staff recruited solely in the UK would find themselves out of business very rapidly in a market where national boundaries are increasingly irrelevant.