Immigration Translates Into Benefits For The UK Economy
19-Apr-2011
Technical Translations' Melandra Smith highlights the economic benefits of immigration. Manufacturing, aerospace, engineering and cutting edge technology businesses are queuing to open up new export markets, and we at Technical Translations have seen increased requests for all sorts of business documentation to be translated into some of the main languages of the emerging superpowers and those countries who have been the most successful at holding their own during the downturn; Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese, and German to name but a few.
We’d all like to exploit the latest opportunities, but UK businesses are up against another problem right on our own doorstep, and one which looks set to threaten our very capability to hold our own against the countries we’re trying to sell to – a shortage of skilled staff available to fill British industry jobs.The UK tabloids are very good at illustrating a highly xenophobic view of increased immigration – barely educated foreigners travelling halfway across the world to sponge off generous UK state handouts and terrorise decent law-abiding citizens; all paid for by the hard-working taxpayer.
But there is another view. There is nothing to prevent a good system of regulated immigration being put into place to allow skilled workers from abroad to enter the UK to fill those industry jobs that we can’t supply home-grown workers for. There is currently a desperate shortage of workers in all kinds of practical manufacturing placements for welders, electricians, engineers, fabricators, machinists, etc., as well as in catering, construction and agriculture.
The staffing shortfall in the UK has been put down to two main factors; our ageing population and an increase in young people making the choice to carry on into higher education. In order to compete internationally we need to have in place an effective plan for managing immigration to allow UK industry to get the best out of the wide variety of skills on offer from abroad - as well as improving access to apprenticeships and education for the domestic workforce.
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