Is the UK pulling up the drawbridge on talent

The UK may be vehement that it remains outward looking and open to global talent but developments over 2016 reflect the opposite. The overall anti-immigrant rhetoric in the build up to Brexit, a crackdown on work visas and the continuing drop in Indian students choosing UK universities have contributed to the image of a country closing its doors.Prime Minister Theresa May sought to downplay the widespread feeling of discontent in India over Britain's increasingly tightening stance on visas - be it for students or professionals.“India now has one of the best visa services for the UK in the world, with more application points than any other country and the only country where it is possible to get a same-day visa,” she highlighted during her first visit to India as Prime Minister.However, that did little to dismiss notions of the country succumbing to much of the anti-immigrant rhetoric which was seen as central to the campaign against Britain's membership of the European Union (EU). With the UK's hands still tied as an EU member until formal Brexit negotiations are clinched, the only scope it has of trimming migration is from outside the EU. And, it is a fact that Indians form the largest chunk in this category.Indian IT workers accounted for nearly 90 per cent of visas issued under the Tier 2 intra-company transfer (ICT) category, which became the latest target for a crackdown in 2016.The UK's independent Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) had recommended this crackdown with a clear reference to Indian IT professionals earlier this year: “Indeed, partners told us that India currently has a competitive advantage in training IT workers and in the time it would take to fully upskill the native population, technology would have moved on.“We did not see any substantive evidence of long-standing reciprocal arrangements whereby UK staff are given the opportunity to gain skills, training and experience from working in India.”This crackdown went hand-in-hand with a tightening of student visa norms, contributing to a further drop in Indian students choosing the UK as a preferred destination for higher education.The UK's Office of National Statistics (ONS) revealed in August this year that there had been “statistically significant” decline in the number of non-EU citizens migrating to the UK to study, from 134,000 in the previous year to 111,000.This corroborated previous data from the UK's Higher Education Funding Council for England, which has highlighted that the number of Indian students coming to the UK fell from 18,535 in 2010-11 to 10,235 in 2012-13. Removal of the post-study work visa route in 2012 has been widely recognised as one of the major off-putting factors, resulting in Indian students choosing other more welcoming destinations like the US and Australia.Indian commerce minister Nirmala Sitharaman was candid in her remarks during PM May's India visit: “The UK seems to want access to the Indian market, the UK seems to want Indian investments, but the UK does not seem to want Indian talent.”India's Acting High Commissioner to the UK, Dinesh Patnaik, told India Inc. that the key was “access”.“India does not want to push Indians into the UK. Our government's position is that we want access for our people everywhere in the world,” he stressed.No doubt this issue of access will dominate much of 2017 as the UK seeks to strike closer economic ties outside the EU.