In this week's C&EN, this news (article by by Benjamin Plackett)
In a bid to cut immigration, the British government says it will raise the minimum salary that skilled migrants must earn to qualify for a work visa to £38,000 ($47,800) from £26,200 ($33,000). The governing Conservative party is keen to make ground on promises to stem rising rates of immigration ahead of a general election, due to take place in 2024.
The new rules mean that about 300,000 people who came to the UK last year would now be ineligible to do so, according to the government’s calculations. Many scientists are concerned because the new threshold is higher than the salary of most early-career researchers.
“We’ll see still fewer overseas applicants for postdocs in the UK,” says Ben Sheldon, a zoologist at the University of Oxford. “We don’t train enough high-quality PhD students to be able to recruit entirely from within.” More than 60% of postdoctoral researchers in the UK come from overseas, according to a report from the Royal Society, the UK’s scientific academy.
This anxiety is echoed by others. “These proposed changes, combined with big increases in visa costs earlier this year, run the risk that the UK becomes a less and less attractive destination for the world’s brightest and best talent,” says Daniel Rathbone, interim executive director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE), which lobbies for better science funding in the UK.
I can't pretend like I understand UK immigration policy, but it seems to me that raising a salary threshold by 45% in a year will cause large disruptions. I wonder if this will get walked back?
I recall doing something similar when I was in high school. Having watched a few videos of this experiment on Youtube in the last few minutes, I am amazed at how cavalier safety is in high school chemistry. I would be fired from my job as an industrial chemist if I were to duplicate what I saw. The safety violations were numerous, including open flames, little or no PPE, hazardous chemicals outside the hood, and generally no safety protocol or containment plan for either the acid or the evolved explosive gas.
ReplyDeleteI think ultimately this ends up coming down to how funding agencies react, no? It'll become a de-facto minimum salary, but probably fewer grants funded.
ReplyDeleteI'd have to say this is an example of losing a Band-Aid that was covering a fairly serious problem in academic science: the use and abuse of postdocs. But fear not! I'm sure another Band-Aid...or sticking plaster in this case...will be forthcoming!
ReplyDelete