The Points-Based System: Making Migrants Work For Britain

The new Points-Based System (PBS) will come into force in 2008. Non-EU migrants are to be allocated points depending on their ‘benefit to the UK’ and will all have to fit into one of five tiers, which in turn determine what rights they are entitled to during their stay. Most non-EU migrants will need a sponsor to enter the UK, which can be a business or an educational institution.

The PBS will directly affect only a relatively small number of those coming into this country who are in a vulnerable position. It is mainly a repackaging of existing schemes, but the big problems with the PBS lie elsewhere. It reduces migration policy to a one-way street of ‘benefit to UK’ that does not take into account the realities of both Globalisation and human aspirations. The assumption is that migrants make cold cost-benefit decisions that will match the cold calculations of the Government on how many hands, divided by two, it must import to keep inflation at bay. Chance, poverty, love, war, family ties, repression, rumours, etc. do not win you any points here. Plan B for most migrants will be more of the same we have now: being forced to choose exploitation or destitution.

The stated primary focus on the UK and EU will be understood by many as Government sanctioned racist discrimination against non-Whites. The three quarter of a million people trapped in the current system, both visa over-stayers and legacy asylum cases, are simply invisible in the PBS plan.

The implementation of the PBS depends on the development of a comprehensive electronic control apparatus, a ‘management information system’ that will keep track of every migrant in, within and outside of UK, producing patterns of non-compliance for countries and job sectors. This in turn will only be possible with biometric controls and ID cards, not just for migrants, but for everyone, as you cannot make racist assumptions on who is a UK citizen and who is not.

More detailed info on the technicalities of the PBS: http://publish.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/04/369098.html