Immigration under fire for overseas business policy

An immigration strategy of overseas business policy came into focus and under legal pressure this week.

Intra Company Transfers brings in staff for multi-national businesses to the UK from non-EU countries. It basically brings in staff from other countries mostly from India. In an intra-company transfer, a company transfers an employee to work temporarily in a different office, often in another country. In instances like this, a work permit is often issued to workers.

There are controls to ensure that the foreign employee continues to be employed at their specified position throughout their working period – the permit is valid for 2 years in most countries.

The major user of this scheme of bringing in staff in the UK is the IT industry, but many see these as a loophole in UK’s immigration laws. Many feel that immigration’s laws are violated with regards to this for the reason that the guidelines aren’t met in bringing in workers from overseas.

Thousands of staff from India is brought to the UK every year to work on IT services contracts but the thing is, these workers are far cheaper than their UK counterparts. This brings a big blow in the UK’s local work force, especially in the IT industry. This allows Indian staff suppliers to do business at a more competitive cost. But an immigration rule states that there should be a pay bracket to stop cheap labour from going in to UK, thus allowing the UK workers to compete. There is also a rule that a foreign worker can’t be brought in if there is a UK alternative.

This also concerns a case where a man from UK was allegedly discriminated by Indian IT services Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). There is said to be evidence that TCS is breaking the rules when recruiting in staff to the UK.

Individuals involved in the IT profession in the UK are against the use of ICTs because it is hard for them to get employment. There are even alleged evidences that there are thousands of workers in the UK not meeting ICT rules.

The website BackTheMac, which is in opposition against the ICT policies claims that there are about 35,565 ICTs in the UK from India out of about 60,000. The IT workers make up a large percentage of the ICT figures.

In its latest report, TCS claims that it has a global staff of 276,195 which accounts for 92.3% Indian. British staff numbers to a little over 4,000, and UK-based staff – 10,000.

This controversy is not about the alleged violation of ICT rules but it will certainly put them under fire. TCS denies the allegations.

Photo by austinevan