Immigrant says he feels targeted by the government despite ‘making country richer’

Anxo has a biology degree, a teaching qualification, can speak four languages and yet because he earns below the £25,000 salary threshold he would be considered “low-skilled” in the government’s new immigration system.

He was headhunted for his current job in a trading department and his jobs have also included teaching English and coordinating operations.

Anxo called into Shelagh Fogarty’s LBC radio programme to explain how he feels over looked by the British government in it’s new points based immigration system.

“I feel targeted, like I’m considered less than other people,” Anxo said and while he’s benefitted from the UK, “the country has benefitted more from my skills than me because… all the money I’ve been making here, because the cost of living here is so expensive, has been kept in the country.”

Anxo said half his salary goes on rent, he pays taxes and the rest goes on living here: “I’ve made the country richer.”

The salary threshold for skilled workers wanting to come to the UK would be lowered from £30,000 to £25,600.

However, the government says the threshold would be as low as £20,480 for people in “specific shortage occupations” – which currently include nursing, civil engineering, psychology and classical ballet dancing – or those with PhDs relevant to a specific job.

Even though Anxo will not have to leave the UK, as he moved to the country before the referendum on the EU settlement scheme, he worries for those who moved here after the referendum.

He said: “The problem is not in the salaries that are better paid, those have a lot of applications. All the vacancies are in the sectors that pay less than the threshold.

“Hospitality, healthcare, manufacturing, all these sectors they pay less than that and all the people that are working there are mainly working there are Europeans because english people don’t want to do these jobs, and Europeans need jobs.”

Jess Phillips, the MP for Birmingham Yardley slammed the cap in a speech at the House of Commons.

She said: “The idea that my constituents are not skilled because they don’t earn over £30,000, is frankly, insulting.

“It is insulting on every level that our care workers, our nurses, our teachers, there’s so many people who don’t earn £30,000. I really think that this will need to be revisited.

“We should care much more about them than I think, sometimes, we do.”