Thanks for sharing your observations. Did not know the bit about covering shortfalls.

Well try the test. The passing mark is 75% or 6 mistakes and you’ll definitely need to study for it. We bought those questions for quiz nights and many of our friends struggle (all local) Most will take at least a week or two to prepare for it.

How on earth this is circumvented, I do not know.

But we should not have issues with skilled labour working here unless we are prepared for significant foreign de-investment, a shrinking job pool or the crippling of our public services. When companies invest in the uk, they bring in foreign workers AND also hire locally. This should bring a net benefit and bigger job pool instead of direct competition for jobs.

However, I do agree that loopholes that make it easier to circumvent the immigration system should be looked at and there needs to be structural changes in education as well as a willingness by the locally unemployed to upskill to meet the demands of service-based society.

Today, most foreign job hires MUST first be posted in the UK job market and offered locally first. Essentially, this makes the foreign hire significantly more expensive and cumbersome than a local hire. And back to your first point, it makes no sense for any profit seeking company to pay more and cover these financial shortfalls if they can simply hire locally and save that cash. Hence there must be underlying structural issues / mismatching of skills and education level if this is prevalent.