The David Cameron government today defended its decision to introduce an interim limit on skilled workers from India and other countries outside the European Union, despite concerns raised by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and others.
The government has placed a temporary limit of 24,100 non-EU professionals until April 2011, when a permanent annual limit will be announced. The cap has already adversely affected companies who are unable to recruit the skills required from India and elsewhere.
Damian Green, minister for immigration said: "The interim limit was introduced to stop a rush of last minute applications ahead of the annual limit being introduced in April next year and the UK Border Agency has been working very closely with businesses to ensure that these arrangements have been implemented effectively".
Campaign groups such as Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants have announced plans to mount a legal challenge against the annual limit on the ground that the restrictive measure did not get parliamentary approval.
Green said: "There are millions of people in Britain who employers can freely recruit and I expect companies to look to fill job vacancies from the resident labour force before they look for skills outside the UK.
Last year, visas were granted to almost 36,000 workers from outside the EU while we currently have hundreds of thousands of unemployed graduates in subjects such as IT and engineering."
The CBI is one of the business organisations to have responded to the government's consultation on the annual limit. Green added: "The ability of employers to fill vacancies is affected by a wide range of factors including their own training policies, pay and conditions and corporate reputation.
In the vast majority of cases it is unfair to blame our limits for recruitment difficulties".
The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants has not yet been given permission by the courts to seek a judicial review of the annual limit.
Green said: "We will rigorously defend this challenge and are confident of success. The government has been clear; we will introduce our permanent annual limit on economic migrants from outside the EU from April 2011.
While we decide how the annual limit should operate it is imperative that we have interim measures in place to avoid a rush of applications from migrants before the new rules take effect".
Green reiterated the coalition government's promise to to reduce the level of net migration back down to the levels of the 1990s - tens of thousands each year, not hundreds of thousands.
Introducing a limit on migrants from outside Europe coming here to work is just one of the ways we intend to achieve this, he said.