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Suit to soup: Indian MBAs serve as waiters in UK

LONDON: A young Indian immigrant, Sultana from Hyderabad — she has a masters in business administration from a British university — is working as a waitress. ''Unfortunately, I'm not getting the chance I was expecting. That's why I'm here in a fast food restaurant,'' she said in a radio programme on Sunday. She added, ''Most of my friends work in fast food restaurants because they're not getting (what) they deserve for what they studied.'' Others are employed as night-time security staff. With UK barely out of a crippling recession and with unemployment nearing 2.5 million, good jobs are hard to come by. A tough-talking home office minister, Damian Green, said, ''Those coming into the UK under the highly skilled migrant route should only be able to do highly skilled jobs. It should not be used as a means to enter the low skilled jobs market.'' He went on, ''While it's important that low-skilled jobs are filled, there are hundreds of thousands of British people who could be doing them instead of a migrant.'' Such workers are categorized as Tier-1 immigrants under a points-based system started in 2008 by the previous Labour party government. This was tailored to attract ''the brightest and best''. Indians who graduate or complete post-graduate studies in a British university also fall into the Tier-1 classification and are permitted to remain in the UK for up to two years to acquire professional experience. But there is a hint that the system introduced by Labour could be altered. It will also form the foundation of an immigration cap to be imposed by the present Conservative party and Liberal Democrat coalition administration effective from April 2011; and which is expected to be announced soon. There are wider concerns among UK authorities that the Tier-1 post study work route is being exploited by some migrants who provide bogus qualifications to obtain visas. However, the Left-oriented Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) said,''Damian Green is on shaky ground in implying that highly skilled migrants coming to the UK under Tier-1 are entering the low skilled job market in significant numbers over a sustained time period.'' It further said, ''It looks very much like an attempt to justify a drastic reduction in Tier-1 visa numbers under the proposed cap.'' It could undermine Britain's economic recovery, it warned.

                                                                                                               
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