New immigration policy favours wealthy, critics say

London: Critics have accused the government of paving the way for a selective immigration policy whereby only the wealthy will be able to marry who they want from abroad, and only migrants earning more than £31,000 (Dh180,131) a year will be able to settle in Britain.

The immigration minister, Damian Green, was to confirm yesterday that ministers want to move to a more highly selective policy under which only the right kind of migrants are allowed to enter Britain.

"We need to know not just that the right numbers of people are coming here but that the right people are coming here. People who will benefit Britain, not just those who benefit by Britain," Green was to argue in a speech to the Policy Exchange think tank. Green also wants to move the immigration debate on from the single issue of numbers that has dominated for the past decade and instead focus on the benefit to Britain of allowing only the ‘brightest and the best' into the UK.

He says the pressure to reduce net migration numbers to "tens of thousands" will continue as it has since the general election.

‘Numbers falling'

His desire to "raise the tone of the debate" follows the latest figures — showing net migration to Britain reaching a record 252,000 in 2010. Green insists there are "the first small signs" that numbers have been falling since then.

"What we need is a national consensus on how we can make immigration work for Britain. We are evidently a long way from such a consensus but I want to start to build it — the legitimate question in today's world is how we can benefit from immigration," he was to say.

Green was expected to promise that by May — the second anniversary of the coalition — the government will have announced or implemented changes to all the main routes of immigration and broken the link between migration and staying permanently in Britain.

— Guardian News & Media Ltd