As someone who is a Canadian citizen and who's parents came to Canada on its points system (and who grew up in the UK), I'll chime in on the UKIP platform to reform immigration to a points based system.
Canada's system is a solid one for strong economic growth. Possibly the best system in the world when it comes to nation building with an economic outlook in the long term.
However a points system based on skills will immediately wipe out European immigration. Unfortunately for those who prefer European immigrants, people from around the world, especially the developing world have larger pools of elite educated people than Europe.
What a points based system simply based on education and skills essentially results in is that the UK will receive people from the elite parts of the 3rd world (the gated community folks from India, Nigeria, Russia etc). Those people are not the same folks you see scrubbing the washrooms and wiping the counter at McDonalds. These are multilingual, highly educated, and most likely already well off people. And they're smart, very fucking smart. And very cunning. After all they made it where it's very hard to succeed. And so are their kids. Their kids will overachieve, get good grades, will go to university and will be business leaders of the future in the country. This is a massive social change.
It's thing to letting in a few Poles, Ghanians, and Indians into the country to supplant the ageing population, half of whom turn chavs in a generation (probably still better than the average of the population as whole). Another is to bring in an elite group of immigrants from all over the world who are more or less guaranteed to succeed simply due to the fact that they're already creme-de-la-creme of their home countries. That is a wholesale structural change that will upend the UK society completely. This works very well in new-ish Canada (and Australia), but I'm not so sure about this tactic working for the UK.
It'll be interesting to see how the UKIP platform of points based immigration holds up to scrutiny going into the election.
Canada's system is a solid one for strong economic growth. Possibly the best system in the world when it comes to nation building with an economic outlook in the long term.
However a points system based on skills will immediately wipe out European immigration. Unfortunately for those who prefer European immigrants, people from around the world, especially the developing world have larger pools of elite educated people than Europe.
What a points based system simply based on education and skills essentially results in is that the UK will receive people from the elite parts of the 3rd world (the gated community folks from India, Nigeria, Russia etc). Those people are not the same folks you see scrubbing the washrooms and wiping the counter at McDonalds. These are multilingual, highly educated, and most likely already well off people. And they're smart, very fucking smart. And very cunning. After all they made it where it's very hard to succeed. And so are their kids. Their kids will overachieve, get good grades, will go to university and will be business leaders of the future in the country. This is a massive social change.
It's thing to letting in a few Poles, Ghanians, and Indians into the country to supplant the ageing population, half of whom turn chavs in a generation (probably still better than the average of the population as whole). Another is to bring in an elite group of immigrants from all over the world who are more or less guaranteed to succeed simply due to the fact that they're already creme-de-la-creme of their home countries. That is a wholesale structural change that will upend the UK society completely. This works very well in new-ish Canada (and Australia), but I'm not so sure about this tactic working for the UK.
It'll be interesting to see how the UKIP platform of points based immigration holds up to scrutiny going into the election.