At 45,000, Indians top list of UK skilled foreign workers
2 Jun 2008, 1649 Hrs

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London, June 2 (ANI): Britain has 715,000 foreign workers with professional and technical skills, and the Indians are the largest group with a total of 45,000 moving to the UK in 2005 alone.

Apart from the Indians, there were 25,000 Americans, 10,000 Filipinos, 8,000 South Africans and 6,500 Australians, The Work Foundation, an influential think tank, reported.

According to The Independent, these statistics are likely to promote British public hostility to immigration, undermining efforts to attract skilled foreign workers who are crucial to Britain's future prosperity.

The think-tank says skills shortages, an ageing population and increasing demand for highly qualified workers will leave UK companies more dependent than ever on hiring abroad, and challenges the British Cabinet to make greater efforts to put the case for skilled migration to a population sceptical about its merits.

Katerina Rüdiger, the report's author, said the Government needed to be more proactive in promoting Britain to foreign workers and in tackling scepticism in the UK about the extent of migration.

"At present, despite the hype, numbers are relatively low - only 167,000 high- skilled workers came to this country on official figures from 2005. Politicians need to actively make the case for highly skilled migration," she was quoted, as saying.

"The UK is not sufficiently tapping into the global supply of labour to an extent that it would enhance its competitiveness ... A good example is the biomedical and pharmaceutical sector, an industry in which the UK was seen as having a comparative advantage, but which is now facing severe problems connected to the availability of skills," the report concludes. (ANI)