ICT visas may need another look - immigration chief

The state's immigration adviser has said that recently tightened rules to stop foreign IT workers taking work from British IT contractors might need to be toughened up, again.

In somewhat of a scoop for BBC Radio 5, the chairman of the Migration Advisory Committee told the station that rules for intra company transfer (ICT) visas could need "another look."

If changes to the rules that he tabled in July, and which are due to take effect in the new year, prove unhelpful, Professor David Metcalf said he would "have to" rethink.

His admission to Radio 5's MacIntyre show, which has the motto 'bringing people to book', is only less of a journalistic coup because no one from government agreed to participate.

But the programme did hear from a British IT contractor who, blaming the ICT regime, said he had been jobless since 2007, in spite of an IT career spanning almost 20 years.

Contractors, he said, are "very bitter" at there being "no future left in [UK] IT" because Indian techies, on ICTs, have "flooded" the UK, at a time when "there's not enough jobs to go round."

Taken with a testimony from another British IT contractor, his account accused major IT employers in the UK of using ICTs as a means to undercut the domestic workforce.

Two of the sponsors they singled out, BT and CapGemini, denied they had acted in breach of the ICT rules, yet BT admitted it had tried to reduce its reliance on "expensive contractors."

But an Indian national imported to the UK on an ICT by CapGemini, to work in IT at HM Revenue & Customs, said he was remunerated with only a single cash payment of £35 a day.

He claims he was given relief with utility and council tax bills and provided a one-bedroom flat, which was shared with another IT contractor from overseas, in lieu of the remaining salary.

In response, CapGemini stressed it had not acted unlawfully, said it valued local contractors, and pointed out it had "no plans to replace all of its UK contractors with overseas employees."

However under ICT rules, an overseas employee can be brought into the UK only if they have six months' experience, do not replace a UK employee and are paid an appropriate salary.

If these conditions are met, a UK employer is free to import staff it has outside of the EU to fill jobs in the UK without having to try to recruit from the UK labour market first.

However the minimum salary and time at the company for an overseas worker to be eligible for ICT transfer to the UK is due to increase, as the MAC recommended, in January 2010.

This should help revive the spirit of the ICT system that policymakers intended – namely that the visa is for employers to use to import workers with unique skills or company knowledge.

But the Association of Professional Staffing Companies believes that although Prof Metcalf did a sound job, his committee failed to go far enough to protect British IT contractors.

APSCo's chief executive Ann Swain said: "The Home Office needs to be much more aggressive in ensuring that companies are not bringing in entry-level workers on ICTs to undercut the UK workforce."

"The intra-company transfer system was designed to make it easier for companies to bring in key senior workers who have specialist knowledge of their company.

"It is clear that the way in which the system is currently used barely even pays lip service to that intended purpose."

Evidencing her claim, she said analysts and programmers, as well as software engineers, were the most likely UK IT contractors to be replaced by an ICT worker from overseas, according to Home Office records.

She urged the UK Borders Agency to strike off employers who are found to have abused the ICT rules, such as by undercutting, which would ban them from importing immigrants again.

Extra resources to help the agency's 120-strong enforcement team are incoming, Prof Metcalf said, providing some reassurance to the 53,000 British IT workers currently looking for jobs.

Editor's note: Further reading:  Intra-Company Transfers & Work Permit updates