Bankers, lawyers and other high-earning migrants coming to Britain to work in jobs carrying salaries of £150,000 a year or more are to be exempt from the annual limit on immigration.

Scientific researchers are also to be given a "significant advantage" when the permanent immigration cap promised by the Conservatives during the election campaign comes into effect in April.

But, despite claims to being more "business-friendly", the final version of the immigration cap detailed on Wednesday shows that it is still designed to close the door on up to 6,300 skilled workers from outside Europe compared with two years ago.

The immigration minister, Damian Green, said that a total of 20,700 visas will be available to skilled workers and a further 1,000 visas under a new "exceptional talent" route to be introduced from 6 April.

Employers will have to apply for a UK Border Agency certificate of sponsorship for each specific job they want to fill from abroad instead of the annual allocation given to businesses at present.

The annual limit of 20,700 sponsorship certificates will be divided into 12 monthly allocations. The system will be frontloaded with 4,200 visas available in April to meet the likely demand, followed by a limit of 1,500 places each month.

So, overall, footballers aren't actually a big part of the issue. IIRC, a much bigger issue is city finance houses shipping in staff from the outside the EU en masse. Most of them earn barely less than footballers and there's a hell of a lot more of them.

Jon

Top traders are not really an issue. They also prop up the high end property market in London as well.

Well that's all right then.

Yours, the rest of the country.

Yes but they were never going to be excluded whatever you think. The banks spend way too much money lobbying the government to allow that to happen. The Tories get half their funds from the city.

I don't think I was suggesting they should be. Simply saying that if you look at the red ink, 'footballers' make for a smaller contribution than 'merchant bank staff'. i don't honestly expect either to be hit hard by this or any other administration any time soon. The former would be a PR landmine, the latter a funding disaster.

Jon

the ethic diversity