In another IAS Country Guidance case which is due for hearing in a few weeks’ time called GS (Existence of internal armed conflict) Afghanistan CG [2009] UKAIT 00010 in a letter to the Tribunal the Home Secretary makes clear that: The Secretary of State concedes that as at 7 January 2009 for the purpose of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) there is an internal armed conflict in Afghanistan extending to the whole of the territory of Afghanistan. The issues are about the criteria for determining whether a person who claims to be eligible for subsidiary protection status runs a real risk of serious and individual threat by reason of indiscriminate violence. Potentially, this could have a far-reaching effect for other Afghanis who may be able to establish the obligation on the UK to offer them subsidiary protection here so that they will not be sent back to Afghanistan unless they wish to go.

The dire predictions of IAS about impending shortages of workers came closer with the release of the latest immigration statistics for the final quarter of 2008 claimed Keith Best today to the South Side Chamber of Commerce meeting on the Points Based System. “They show that there were only 29,000 initial applicants to the Worker Registration Scheme (WRS) in the period compared with 53,000 in the same period in 2007 and as many as 65,000 in the same period in 2006” he said. “This means that fewer than half are now coming to the UK. The most dramatic fall has been in the Poles – only 16,000 compared with 36,000 in the same period in 2007.

“The Government has extended the restrictions on work for Bulgarians and Romanians. We could now see serious shortages in agriculture (despite raising the quota by 5,000) and other fields. As there is no de-registration when workers leave we do not know how many remain here anyway – although there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that many Poles and other eastern Europeans have already gone home.

“Sadly, the UK has a historic inability of retraining our workforce (despite more money being poured into the Learning & Skills Council) as many British citizens are unwilling or unable to do the lower-paid, lower-skilled but necessary jobs done by migrants workers such as fruit-pickers, abattoir assistants, carers for the elderly and kitchen porters” said Keith Best. “Maybe we have raised expectations too high among school leavers, maybe the structures such as the difficulty in getting back on to JobSeekers’ Allowance after taking temporary employment are at fault but the fact remains that even in time of a recession we rely heavily on migrant workers to sustain our economy.

“It is mischievous of some commentators to take flawed figures from only 2% of passenger movements and draw conclusions about overall migration. Most migrants come for temporary purposes only and do not (and are not allowed to) settle here. In 2008 145,965 were allowed settlement of which 60,770 were employment-related grants; asylum related grants numbered only 3,860 and family formation and reunion grants numbered 52,230, fewer than 2,000 more than in 2007.

“If we are to have a sensible debate on migration it must be based on the facts and not on prejudice.”

END