Robinson

Government officials are expressing concern about recent pronouncements from Britain aimed at further tightening its immigration policies.

"We are very, very worried because it is going in a direction that we are not necessarily comfor-table with," asserts Senator Dr Ronald Robinson, junior minister in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade.

Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown has argued that immigration to the UK will fall when the new rules are implemented.

In clamping down on migrants to the country, Brown signalled that the right to stay permanently in England after living for a certain number of years would be rescinded.

"Instead, we have said that after living here for five years, migrants will have to apply to become probationary citizens and at that point, they will have to pass a points-based test," Brown said.

He also announced a review of the granting of work permits and student visas. The review team will consider whether visas should be granted only to foreign students on degree and postgraduate courses, and stopped for those seeking to take shorter courses leading to lower-level qualifications.

In addition, the prime minister promised that local workers will be given additional opportunities to secure available jobs, with the extension from two to four weeks of the period for which they must be advertised in job centres before employers seek to recruit overseas.

fair approach

Brown said his Labour government favours "a tough, but fair approach (to immigration), rigid in a point system under which we decide what categories of skills are to be allowed into this country".

On Friday, Senator Robinson said there is a strong Jamaican lobby in the UK now with respect to immigration issues.

However, he noted that some of the mischief Britain is aiming to address had their making in dishonest persons trying to beat the system.

Robinson conceded that the issue of student visa and studying was being abused. "A lot of persons enter the country under that premise and eventually their status became illegal. We have contributed to it because we have really abused their systems there," Robinson told The Sunday Gleaner.

Brown has said his Labour government has made mistakes on immigration even as he defends the benefits of workers coming from overseas. Statistics released in Britain indicate that in the year before the Labour Party came to power, British citizenship was granted to 37,000 foreign nationals.

In the first nine months of this year, 118,000 people born overseas have already been issued with British passports. Since 1997, more than 1.3 million grants of citizenship have been made.

It was not immediately clear how many Jamaicans have been issued British passports. Conservative estimates put the number of Jamaicans living in Britain at 500,000.

While Senator Robinson says the Jamaican Government and the diaspora group in England are lobbying the British Government on its immigration policies, Percival La Touche, president of the Association for the Resettlement of Returning Residents (ARRR), is in general agreement with the British move.

"I am not too worried about the direction England is heading with their immigration policy," La Touche told The Sunday Gleaner.

La Touche said he supports the policy to ensure that British nationals are first employed before migrants are considered.

"Britain must look after their own first. They must make sure that persons coming from outside must possess the type of expertise that is not available in England," La Touche said.

The ARRR head also said that new Jamaican migrants were forcing Britain to change its immigration policies.