Immigration and how we value low-paid work

Reading the series of articles and letters over the last few days on the topic of the government’s proposed new rules for immigration, I am struck by the complete disconnect between the stated importance of some jobs and the status and pay they attract. Over and over I read representatives of various industries describing jobs as “vital” or “crucial” amid claims that the absence of people able to do those jobs would be disastrous. Yet the workers doing those jobs are nevertheless described as “low-skilled” and “low-paid”? Why?

If a job is vital and the vacancies are hard to fill, or would be without exploiting desperate immigrants, are these not the very reasons why the pay should be high? Are we not always told that market forces and the importance of the work done justifies the astronomical salaries of our industry leaders? Why is it different for these workers, without whom we are told these sectors will collapse?

Dr Richard Turner (Letters, 21 February) describes how Zimbabwean carers looked after his mother with great skill and compassion, and asserts that “experience shows that British nationals could not be recruited with these skills in sufficient numbers”.

I suggest that he has missed out a crucial final phrase – “at that level of pay”. And why should they be? Why should people do difficult, demanding and highly skilled work for a salary they can barely live on? The implication seems to be that if recent austerity measures have worked, there should be enough equally desperate British-born workers to exploit.

For too long we have depended on people sufficiently desperate to move to our comparatively safe country to be prepared (with little choice) to do these jobs for appallingly low returns. If these jobs really are crucial and difficult to recruit for, we need to respond to that and make them attractive by paying a proper wage. And if that is what the job is worth to the employer and indeed the country, everyone doing it, regardless of origin or nationality, should be paid that wage.
Jill Wallis
Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire

• I was pleased to read that the home secretary, Priti Patel, has said that her immigrant parents would have qualified for admission to the UK under her proposed post-Brexit scheme “under a refugee route because of their persecution” (Skill shortage: Patel tells companies they must ‘train up’ Britons to fill vacancies, 20 February).

Now that her views have been so clearly expressed, I hope that we will see a more enlightened approach by her civil servants in the Home Office, resulting in a less hostile environment and a more sympathetic and positive attitude towards those currently fleeing from persecution and seeking asylum in the UK.
Harvey Sanders
London

• David Moores, citing the Canadian example (Letters, 21 February), praises Priti Patel’s insistence that immigrants to the UK must be able to speak English. She admits that her own parents would not have passed that test. But neither would the thousands of immigrants like myself who have contributed to the economic and cultural high ground of the UK in every field of human endeavour, ranging from sport, science, business and government, to entertainment and all branches of cultural activities.

This country would be very much poorer if their contribution had been denied by their inability to speak English on their arrival here.
Frank Land
Totnes, Devon

• I am confused at the government’s immigration proposals. As I understand it, the plan is to reserve low-skilled and low-paid jobs for Britons and to remove the cap on immigration for skilled and well-paid jobs. How is this “levelling up”? Wouldn’t it be better to invest in training and educating Britons to take up skilled employment and allowing immigration for unskilled work?
Dena Darling
Felixstowe, Suffolk

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