By Karim Adel El-Sayed
ANKARA
One in five degree-educated new EU migrants works in a low-skilled job in the U.K., a report published Friday by the Institute for Public Policy Research revealed.
In a statement published alongside the report, the progressive U.K.-based think tank said most migrant groups have lower employment rates than non-migrant groups and there was tendency for migrants to be overqualified for their jobs.
This represented “significant losses of potential and talent” that would have negative impacts on the European economy, the statement said.
The report found that factors such as gender, discrimination, labor market structures and employment rights all contributed to a lack of inclusivity in the high-skills job market and “higher concentrations of some migrant groups in lower-skill sectors of the economy,” the statement said.
The result of this, the report claimed, was a growing misallocation of skills, with overqualification on the rise among migrants.
The growing skills gap in many European economies adds to the urgency of this issue being resolved, the statement said.
Among the report’s findings were that, regardless of their qualification level, non-EU migrants have lower employment rates than non-migrants.
It also found that the U.K. “is an outlier in Europe, in the sense that only there do migrants from within the EU have higher employment rates than non-migrants.”
The report ended by comparing the German and British labor markets, finding that, in both countries, low employment rates among non-EU migrants could almost entirely be accounted for by low employment rates among migrant women.
The U.K. had a higher concentration of certain nationality groups in specific low-skill sectors of the economy than Germany, but Germany had lower overall migrant employment rates than the U.K., the report found.
Research and polls
MigrationWatch UK, an immigration research organization, compiled and published a series of YouGov polls last month that found that 76 percent of people wanted immigration reduced and 67 percent thought employers should give priority to British people when recruiting.
The Migration Advisory Committee, an independent public body sponsored by the Home Office, published a report on the growth of EU and non-EU labor in low-skilled jobs and its impact on the U.K. in July 2014.
It said migrants were more mobile and flexible than native workers and could move closer to workplaces and do shift work.
The report highlighted the implications for social cohesion, as the composition of local areas changed rapidly.
It also mentioned the pressure on social services and the “small negative impact on the wages of the low-paid.”
Immigration key campaign battleground
Some of the liveliest clashes during Thursday’s seven-way leaders’ election debate were about immigration and the EU.
Nick Clegg, deputy prime minister and leader of the centrist Liberal Democrats Party, differentiated between “good” and ”bad” immigration.
While those who abuse the system should be punished, he said the U.K. should "remain a decent, generous-hearted, open minded nation that welcomes people who play by the rules," adding that the NHS would collapse without foreign workers.
Nigel Farage, leader of the right-wing anti-EU anti-immigrant UKIP said: "What, as EU members, can we do to control immigration? Nothing."
"Immigration... is now net 300,000 people a year. It is 10 times anything this country has had to live with since 1945," he said.
Welsh nationalist Plaid Cymru Party leader Leanne Wood refused to join the “scapegoating” of immigrants, saying that the recession was not caused by low-paid Polish or Estonian workers. Scottish nationalist SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon concurred, saying the three main parties were “driven by the fear of UKIP.”
