Supplementary memorandum submitted by
the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC)
In reply to your e-mail dated 17 March 2009
requesting answers to two further questions posed by the HASC,
I attach my answers below.
Q. What is the nature and scale of possible abuse
of the intra-company transfer route? What, if any, evidence has
MAC seen of abuse of this route?
A. The MAC have not currently seen firm evidence
of abuse of this route. We cannot yet comment on whether abuse
takes place or the scale of the issue. We will, for our report
on Tier 2 in July this year, be looking at this area.
Q. As part of consideraion of what constitute
`sensible' occupations to include on the Shortage Occupation List,
your Committee considered the impact on employment opportunities
for UK resident workers. What conclusions did you come to?
A. We felt this was a highly important question
and it was a central theme in our work. We considered occupations
on a case-by-case basis, as set out in Chapter 9 of our September
2008 report. For instance, in the case of some health care occupations,
we did not wish the health of the nation to be put at risk and
we took this into account. In other cases, such as veterinary
nurses, we rejected calls for occupations to be placed on the
list because we were concerned about the impact it would have
on recruitment from the resident population.
March 2009
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