HR: Migrant workers becoming less welcome

In the UK, the "import" of foreign labour began in the industrial revolution - although migrant labour had been around for much longer than that.

Migrant labour was mobile labour - following the seasons, working in harvest time as harvests took place all over Europe. The primary group involved were the Romanies, now renamed "the Roma."

Next in the UK were the Irish - labourers imported to work on the canals, railways and, later, roads. Although Ireland was, at that time, part of the UK, the Irish were never regarded as "local" and were always seen as temporary, almost itinerant, labour.

After WWII, a shortage of men meant a need to find labour for, e.g., driving buses. West Indian (i.e. residents of the Caribbean but of African descent) men were the preferred group and also keeping it within the UK's "family."

In France, migrant labour came from France's territories including North Africa and the Middle East.

But with the opening of Europe under the 1992 programme, the freedom of labour section meant that citizens of any European country could work in any other EU country without restrictions.

And then EU law began to interfere making it illegal for employers to prefer their own nationality over others. Incredibly, that has led to the farcical situation where it is considered discriminatory to reject a person's job application on the sole basis that they do not have sufficient language skills. And, even more astonishingly, when a law firm made a decision that it would recruit only from within the EU, an Indian was able to successfully use EU law to argue that this was a breach of EU law on equal opportunities.

The case of a German doctor who, by reason of "passported" qualifications was able to take a job in the UK where he had no training in the drugs available in the UK, and limited English especially technical English, has caused a backlash. People died and the provisions of EU law are being blamed. The European Commission has said - but not formally ruled - that there are jobs where differences in qualifications and languages should allow for the rejection of applications.

That has implications for all trades and professions. But it leaves the door open for unskilled labour to move around Europe where, in many cases, the move is so as to take advantage of benefit systems.

The recession saw many of the jobs taken by migrants disappear and many have gone home: the UK and Ireland have both seen a considerable exodus.

Across the world, including Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia, governments are responding to demands to reduce permits granted to foreign labour.

There are sound economic reasons for this in many cases: economic migrants tend to live in the lower-cost districts. That reduces the housing stock for locals in low paid jobs. While there are macro-economic arguments that migrant labour increases national productivity, and sociological arguments that migrant labour does the dirty jobs that local labour chooses not to do, on the most micro-economic levels, that of individuals and families, there is a simple equation: no job, no money, no where to live and no food.

Across South East Asia and much of the Middle East, the economies are kept going by legions of expatriate Filipinos. Despite their generally acceptable levels of English and, amongst the young, high levels of education, they are often doomed to low-grade jobs in F&B and hotels.

In the same regions, Bangladeshi men are the labourers of choice in the construction industry, shipped around Singapore - literally - by the lorry load. In Malaysia, the role is filled by Indonesians. In both cases, they are poorly educated and poorly motivated.

But the IT industry - and some new sciences - are finding their talent in India. However, countries are beginning to become concerned as to concentrations of Indians. It has been said that the area to the west of London has the largest Indian population of any city outside Mumbai. That may or may not be so, but it demonstrates the scale of migration and concentration of a population within a population.

That kind of concentration causes concern: in North London, a group of radical Jews frequently try to get permission to put a wire around part of the district in which they have built a population. That wire, they say, is to mark an area in which they will practise their own specific style of religion.

Concentrations of Muslims have sought permission to build mosques with large domes and minarets in areas where the building would, architecturally, be inappropriate. Claims are made that the rejection of permission for a building in such a style are discriminatory. And yet, in Margate in the South East of England, Muslims have adopted a simple, elegant, pragmatic - and cheap - solution to their problem. They have bought and re-dedicated a redundant church. It has a steeple.

The situation has reached a climax in Singapore. With the government saying that it wants to increase the population of the tiny island to 6 million, ordinary Singaporeans are asking the blunt question "where will we put the extra people?" Singapore strives to be more like Hong Kong than it is like Malaysia and Hong Kong has six million people. It also has far more land and dozens of islands in addition to the extensively populated New Territories.

Last month, Singapore's prime minister LEE Hsien Loong said that the immigration quota for next year would be 100,000. Singaporeans reacted angrily (or at least as angrily as they ever do) and the figure has now been revised down by 20%. Indians, who make up a significant proportion of that figure, are upset that Singaporeans say that foreigners crowd public transport and competing for homes and jobs. The largest irony of all is that Singapore is striving to remake itself as a tourism-led economy and, therefore, wants foreigners to come in vast numbers. But the plan is that they bring their money, spend it and leave.

In Malaysia, immigration measures have been introduced to reduce the inflow from India and China - which concerns Malaysia because so many visitors overstay, becoming illegal immigrants. And Malaysia's experience is that illegal immigrants - no matter where they are from - are frequently involved in crime.

Some immigrants are "invisible," to the population: these are often those in middle management jobs who live modest, generally, suburban lives. But they are neither highly skilled nor are they labourers. It is on these that the axe is most likely to fall.

And, from a domestic development point of view, that's probably the correct place for it to fall. These are the jobs that locals should be promoted into on their way to senior management.

It will be interesting to see if that's actually what happens.