There is a great retrospective in the WSJ today on how the UK's post-Brexit experiment with big increases in legal immigration went wrong.
Their mistakes yield some important policy lessons for supporters *and* critics of skilled immigration. Let's dive in:
(tl;dr: What was intended to be a skilled immigration surge made the catastrophic mistake of setting visa criteria based on college degrees and workers filling so-called "labor shortages," ultimately leading instead to a surge in low-skilled, rather than high-skilled, immigration.)
Post-pandemic Britain dramatically increased net migration, shifting away from the EU and towards migrants from outside Europe.
Visa issuance went up across the board: work visas, study visas, and particularly dependent visas.
The plan was initially supposed to be a limited, targeted, skilled immigration surge. The UK, post-Brexit, would be free to go out and attract top talent from anywhere. But things went wrong quickly. What constituted "skilled" work included roofers (!) alongside business executives.
The system was then blown apart by businesses claiming "labor shortages." Rather than raise pay, businesses appealed for special carve-outs in areas like construction. Basing their visa programs on filling so-called shortages invited this kind of lobbying. Nobody agrees on what a labor shortage actually means. The UK has a technocratic body meant to identify them, but it's ultimately just vibes and raw interest group battles all the way down.
Next, the UK rubber-stamped visas for students and their dependents regardless of the quality of the program or school in which they enrolled. There was a subsequent explosion in low-quality degree programs catering to foreign students (and their dependents) to take advantage of this option. From the article:
"While some students went to well-known universities such as Oxford or Cambridge, the number of students undertaking one-year master’s degrees from lesser known British universities shot up. And unlike pre-Brexit, many more stayed on in the U.K. after graduating.
The fruits of that recruitment drive are visible today. In east London sit two modern high-rises, the Import Building and the Export Building, which house three different universities’ London campuses stacked next to each other."
Designing student visa programs this way created an enormous incentive for both colleges and students to expand + take advantage of low-quality degree programs.
This is something Tory MP Neil O'Brien covered well in this 2023 Substack post, "The Deliveroo Visa Scandal":
neilobrien.co.uk/p/the-delivero…
The political backlash to all this is growing and, in my view, the UK will end with enormous, long-lasting cuts to immigration in part because of these mistakes (and not building housing, but that's another conversation...).
So what lessons does this have for how the US should design skilled immigration policy? Here are a few:
1. Skilled immigration programs need to be ruthlessly and narrowly focused on admitting the highest-paid applicants. High salaries are hard to game or fake. It's the most transparent criteria you can set.
2. Ignore appeals to "labor shortages." This is something that both many proponents and opponents of skilled immigration get wrong. There is no widespread agreement on what an industry or occupation-specific labor shortage actually means. Nor is there much reason to think that filling "shortages" is any better than simply trying to attract the most talented, well-paid people.
3. Do not outsource your immigration system to university admissions offices. Their incentives are not aligned with maximizing the long-term economic and fiscal benefits to the country. "Stapling green cards to diplomas," a longtime zombie proposal from my fellow pro-high-skilled immigration advocates, would create perverse incentives that would be difficult to combat.
These are many of the same lessons my colleagues and I wrote about in January in our report, Exceptional By Design, which laid out in detail a new vision for America's high-skilled immigration system. I'm biased, of course, but I think everything we've seen since reinforces what we wrote here. I highly encourage you to check it out:
eig.org/wp-content/upl…
Their mistakes yield some important policy lessons for supporters *and* critics of skilled immigration. Let's dive in:
(tl;dr: What was intended to be a skilled immigration surge made the catastrophic mistake of setting visa criteria based on college degrees and workers filling so-called "labor shortages," ultimately leading instead to a surge in low-skilled, rather than high-skilled, immigration.)
Post-pandemic Britain dramatically increased net migration, shifting away from the EU and towards migrants from outside Europe.
Visa issuance went up across the board: work visas, study visas, and particularly dependent visas.
The plan was initially supposed to be a limited, targeted, skilled immigration surge. The UK, post-Brexit, would be free to go out and attract top talent from anywhere. But things went wrong quickly. What constituted "skilled" work included roofers (!) alongside business executives.
The system was then blown apart by businesses claiming "labor shortages." Rather than raise pay, businesses appealed for special carve-outs in areas like construction. Basing their visa programs on filling so-called shortages invited this kind of lobbying. Nobody agrees on what a labor shortage actually means. The UK has a technocratic body meant to identify them, but it's ultimately just vibes and raw interest group battles all the way down.
Next, the UK rubber-stamped visas for students and their dependents regardless of the quality of the program or school in which they enrolled. There was a subsequent explosion in low-quality degree programs catering to foreign students (and their dependents) to take advantage of this option. From the article:
"While some students went to well-known universities such as Oxford or Cambridge, the number of students undertaking one-year master’s degrees from lesser known British universities shot up. And unlike pre-Brexit, many more stayed on in the U.K. after graduating.
The fruits of that recruitment drive are visible today. In east London sit two modern high-rises, the Import Building and the Export Building, which house three different universities’ London campuses stacked next to each other."
Designing student visa programs this way created an enormous incentive for both colleges and students to expand + take advantage of low-quality degree programs.
This is something Tory MP Neil O'Brien covered well in this 2023 Substack post, "The Deliveroo Visa Scandal":
neilobrien.co.uk/p/the-delivero…
The political backlash to all this is growing and, in my view, the UK will end with enormous, long-lasting cuts to immigration in part because of these mistakes (and not building housing, but that's another conversation...).
So what lessons does this have for how the US should design skilled immigration policy? Here are a few:
1. Skilled immigration programs need to be ruthlessly and narrowly focused on admitting the highest-paid applicants. High salaries are hard to game or fake. It's the most transparent criteria you can set.
2. Ignore appeals to "labor shortages." This is something that both many proponents and opponents of skilled immigration get wrong. There is no widespread agreement on what an industry or occupation-specific labor shortage actually means. Nor is there much reason to think that filling "shortages" is any better than simply trying to attract the most talented, well-paid people.
3. Do not outsource your immigration system to university admissions offices. Their incentives are not aligned with maximizing the long-term economic and fiscal benefits to the country. "Stapling green cards to diplomas," a longtime zombie proposal from my fellow pro-high-skilled immigration advocates, would create perverse incentives that would be difficult to combat.
These are many of the same lessons my colleagues and I wrote about in January in our report, Exceptional By Design, which laid out in detail a new vision for America's high-skilled immigration system. I'm biased, of course, but I think everything we've seen since reinforces what we wrote here. I highly encourage you to check it out:
eig.org/wp-content/upl…
May be of interest to @GarettJones @tylercowen @DanielDiMartino @CharlesFLehman @rSanti97 @makosloff @GaryWinslett
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