By Business & Finance 
By Katya Puyraud, co-founder, Euro Start Entreprises
If the Brexit fallout still has you worried, spare a thought for the UK’s 2.2 million European workers.
Despite cross-party calls for guarantees on existing jobs, the future of migrant labour is in the balance, with visas set for considerable reform. But what would be the outcome of a popular push for reduced immigration, and could it actually benefit companies and jobseekers?
The UK’s departure from the EU will have its most tangible impact on the freedom of movement. Currently any member of the European Economic Area can move to the United Kingdom without a visa in order to seek employment, granting them the same opportunities as any UK resident, and visa versa (if you excuse the pun).
On a basic level, the referendum result will impose the same sort of restrictions currently applied to non-EU residents: paying and waiting to obtain a visa.
New visas require a bit more consideration. Of the many non-EU visas, the absence of the tier 3 temporary visa is notable. Tier 3, which pertained to unskilled EU labour, was suspended in response to the ready availability of EU workers. As a result, there is currently no means by which a non-EU worker can obtain a work visa without a graduate level job on a salary above £25,000, rising to as much as £35,000 dependent on certain conditions.
This is a pressing issue for the 82% of the current EU workforce in the UK who don’t meet these requirements, and an all-consuming disaster for the 96% of affected farm labourers, and 94% of affected hotel and restaurant workers. Barring drastic changes, these sectors will have to source from the UK population in future.
While a Labour motion to guarantee EU workers’ job security and right to live in the UK passed comfortably, much of the Conservative Party abstained, and the result is ultimately non-binding. Incumbent Prime Minister Theresa May has been explicitly coy about the status of European passport holders, refusing to throw away what she considers a bartering chip in Brexit negotiations.
It’s not only visas that are tenuous: some are also re-evaluating the cost-effectiveness of working in the UK. The sharp fall in the value of the Pound is closing the gap between wages in the UK and their countries of origin, meaning less money to send back home to support families and pay for properties.
Public sentiment seems to be with them, but without more concrete guarantees it will be an uncertain two years for the UK’s migrant population.
SKILLED WORKERS
As new and expanding businesses face a massive deficit of unskilled labour, visa reforms seem a likely proposition. Indeed, they may have been on the cards well before Brexit. In a reflection of the emerging political landscape, Theresa May and her advisors took David Cameron to task on two visa categories last year: the tier 1 entrepreneurs and the tier 2 skilled workers.
Of more than 13,000 tier 1 applicants since 2008, only 1500 have resulted in active companies, a considerably lower proportion than the national average for failed start-ups. Skilled worker visas meanwhile constitute up to 20,800 admissions a year, where May and others would argue that the requisite skills already exist in the UK jobs market. While Graduate Entrepreneur visas for university leavers performed far better, a desire to fulfil Leave voters’ mandate to lower immigration may make hiring from abroad more difficult.
Concerns about competitiveness in certain sectors were already bubbling over before the referendum. Leave advocate and inventor James Dyson claimed that non-EU workers were implicitly discriminated against by visa laws, as the costs and time involved in arranging visas was not possible or palatable for many businesses.
Attempts had been made to bridge this gap, but efforts like the much-feted Tech City UK’s 200-capped tier 1 Exceptional Talent Visa for Digital Technology have proved surprisingly unsuccessful, with only 37 applications as of January 2016.
The UK’s political capital is also its business and investment capital, and London will be keen to flex its muscle. The most drastic calls for an independent European city-state are unlikely to come to fruition, but some have proposed a special London visa, enabling easy access to work in the city. While leaving could have a broader equalising effect, giving non-EU and EU workers a level playing field for UK jobs, London visas might go beyond this to boosting sectors that require skilled workers. London’s famed Silicon Roundabout, threatened by uncertainty over the loss of EU data and communications laws, could potentially tap into a labour market that other tech hubs and industries were profiting from.
The turmoil among the Leave campaign’s figureheads and abandoned promises has shown that whatever the public demand, there is a reluctance to discard too much in our European relationship
While the stability of Europe’s financial heartland is important, any form of legislative independence or primacy could prove a double-edged sword. Ultimately London is better equipped to deal with this economic fallout than many other cities across the UK, and any favouritism risks exacerbating problems of housing and the cost of living, while putting projects like the Northern powerhouse at risk.
A more realistic option might be the formation of a new tier 1 category for so-called ‘angel investors’: rich city benefactors who are willing to fund an idea with their own investment. Whatever happens, London’s largest businesses will be at the forefront, with the clout of lobbying and government consultation to represent their interests.
Ultimately, it may be a simple issue of cost effectiveness. Many will think twice before abandoning prime real estate and the cultural capital of their London headquarters.
The turmoil among the Leave campaign’s figureheads and abandoned promises has shown that whatever the public demand, there is a reluctance to discard too much in our European relationship. While any agreement will be hard fought and harder won, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that British imports are of great importance to our trading partners, and neither side will want to lose them.
When both the UK and EU want to take a hard line without fundamentally changing anything, continued membership of the European Economic Area – and the likely retention of its demand for free movement of labour – starts to look reassuringly plausible.
About the blogger
Having started off in journalism in London, Katya Puyraud then went to film school and ended up working as an assistant film editor on over 20 US and UK films in the British film studios of Shepperton, Twickenham and Pinewood.
After working for the BBC in the documentaries department, she moved to Paris to become a scriptwriter for TV and film and published the art and poetry book Mademoiselle London, which debuted in the famous Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Saint Michel.
In 2007, she and her husband set up Euro Start Entreprises in Paris, helping hundreds of expats and entrepreneurs set up their companies in over 30 countries worldwide.
