Restricting
the number of visas granted to students and highly-skilled workers does little
to cut overall migration. Tighter restrictions on
low-skilled workers does appear to reduce migration, but also leads to a
"significant portion" of prospective immigrants turning to illegal
ways to enter a country, it said.
The study was conducted by
academics at University College London (UCL), in conjunction with colleagues at
the Royal Holloway and University of Birmingham, and was published in Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences.The findings are likely to be
seized on by campaigners demanding the government relax its immigration
rules.
The
government's "hostile environment" for illegal immigrants was also widely
criticised earlier this year after a number of Windrush generation
migrants were wrongly caught up in the clampdown. Strict government controls
on immigration drive up the number of people entering a country illegally, a
new study has found.
While visa restrictions cut overall migration, academics said
they can be "ineffective and counterproductive" because they force
more people to find unlawful ways to cross borders. The new study found
that restrictions on family migration were especially unhelpful, leading
around a quarter of people who would have moved country legally to instead do
so via illegal channels.
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