UK ‘only wants rich immigrants or those with business savvy’

High-earning migrants and promising student entrepreneurs will find it easier to work in Britain as the coalition aims to ensure only “the right people are coming here”, the Immigration Minister has said.

Damian Green, a Conservative MP, said middle managers, unskilled labourers and benefit seekers would be kept out as the coalition seeks only migrants who “add to the quality of life in Britain”.

He insisted it was time to move away from the debate over numbers, be more selective, and ask “how we can benefit from immigration”.

His call came after immigration advisers found there were up to 23 fewer jobs for British workers for every additional 100 working migrants coming from outside the European Union.

The Migration Advisory Committee (Mac) said that considering the impact of migration on national output, GDP, “does not present a true picture” and the economic well-being of the resident population should be the focus instead. Mr Green said: “I believe it changes the whole intellectual basis of the immigration debate.

“It supports a more selective approach to non-EU migration. We need to know not just that the right numbers of people are coming here, but that the right people are coming here.”

The government was considering changing the rules “so that jobs for high earners do not need to be advertised here first”, he added. “That would make it easier for employers to recruit the most economically valuable migrants to come here.”

The minister said he wanted to bring in a new route to make it easier for “international students who have engaged in supervised entrepreneurial activity during their university studies in the United Kingdom and who want to stay on after their studies to develop their ideas”. But bringing in any migrants who would be economically dependent on the state or who can “play no role in the life of this country” is unacceptable, he said.

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of the campaign group Migration Watch UK, said: “This speech shows the government is determined to get the numbers down as they promised and they intend to do this by being much more selective.”

But the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) warned that the speech was “laying the ground work for a hammer blow to the human rights of cross-border partners and their families”.

JCWI chief executive Habib Rahman said: “They’ve already been hit with an age minimum, although we defeated that, language requirements and ever-increasing visa fees.

“Now they face what is likely to be an unreasonably high income threshold. One might argue that this government has it in for poor people who fall in love with anyone who’s not resident in the UK.”