Hollywood elites will be given preferential “fast-track” visas under the government’s reformed immigration system, Home Secretary Priti Patel announced on Wednesday.
Actors and musicians who are “prestigious award winners” will be put at the front of the immigration queue, including those who win Oscars, Grammys, and BAFTAs. Nobel Prize winners will also be among those eligible for the right to live and work in the UK.
Announcing the rule change, the Home Secretary said: “Winners of these awards have reached the pinnacle of their career and they have so much to offer the UK.
“These important changes will give them the freedom to come and work in our world-leading arts, sciences, music, and film industries as we build back better.
“This is exactly what our new point-based immigration system was designed for – attracting the best and brightest based on the skills and talent they have, not where they’ve come from.”
The Home Office said that winners of awards in the areas of dance, fashion, architecture, and social sciences will also be included in the “Global Talent” fast-track visa system.
On Tuesday, Patel also inked an immigration deal with India, which will allow “young professionals” between the ages of 18 to 30-years-old to stay in either country for up to 24 months in exchange for India agreeing to accept more deportations of illegal migrants.
“The historic agreement delivers on the UK government’s fair but firm New Plan for Immigration – attracting the best and brightest and supporting people coming to the UK through legal routes, while stopping the abuse of the system and speeding up the removal of those who have no right to be in the UK,” the Home Office said in a statement.
England Will Need to Build Over 100K Houses Per Year to Keep Up with Mass Migration https://t.co/RtmcNjDEra
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) December 30, 2020
The Conservative Party’s unfulfilled pledge to reduce net migration to the country “from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands” was officially abandoned by Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2019.
The post-Brexit migration scheme since put forward by the government relies on a points-based system supposedly modelled of a similar policy adopted in Australia. However, unlike Australia, the British government has so far refused to impose a hard cap on the number of migrants allowed into the country annually.
Analysis conducted last year by the Migration Watch UK think tank found that the government’s policy could leave the door open for up to 660 million migrant workers, due to the uncapped nature of the scheme.
Despite promises from Patel and Johnson to “take back control” of the nation’s borders following Brexit, the first months of official independence from the European Union have seen nothing of the kind.
So far this year, over 2,100 illegal migrants have crossed the English Channel in small boats from France, over three times as many as were tallied during last year’s record year for illegal boat migration.
As in the case of setting a hard cap on legal immigration, the UK government has also failed to follow the lead of Australia in adopting the unilateral ‘turn back the boats’ approach which was enacted under former Aussie Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s wildly successful “Operation Sovereign Borders“, which effectively eliminated illegal boat migration to the country.
A report from the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford has found that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) undercounted net EU migration to the United Kingdom by an average of 93,000 per year between 2012 and 2020 https://t.co/sRh1GqVTg3
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) April 18, 2021
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
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