PROFESSOR DYLAN JONES-EVANS

Many have argued that one of the drivers of the referendum result to leave the European Union was a fear of immigration which, in the minds of a significant part of the population, had become too high. Yet one of the real failures of the remain camp was to emphasise the positive benefits of immigration which affects all aspects of our lives. With a similar discussion on immigration currently going on in America under the Trump Presidency especially in terms of increasing jobs for US born citizens, it may be worth looking in detail at the impact that immigration has had on the World’s largest economy over the last two decades. One of the first studies to identify the positive impact of immigrants was the ground-breaking book “ The New Argonauts ” published back in 2006 from the Berkeley academic Anna Lee Saxenian. In a tour de force of modern economic geography, she examined the effect that immigrants were having on the development of the most economically successful region glo...

According to the data from European Forum Alpbach , 276,124 EU citizens have applied since 2003 to go to another member state to work on a permanent basis with their profession. The countries experiencing the most brain drain have been Poland (33,207 professionals), Germany (29,670), Romania (26,496), Greece (22,260) and the UK (21,519). At the same time, the UK has been the country with the most brain gain as well: 76,956 professionals moved to the UK after obtaining their qualification in another EU country, followed by Germany (38,343), Belgium (22,835), Cyprus (22,834) and Austria (19,625). The most mobile brains within the EU since 2003: 1. Secondary school teacher 54,040 2. Doctor of medicine 47,998 3. Nurse 39,773 4. Physiotherapist 12,529 5. Dental practitioner 8,907 This is a fascinating piece of research which shows the importance of immigration to the professional UK labour force. It also raises the question why the UK isn't training the numbers of teach...