India Revokes Work Visas to Protect Its Workers
Thousands of foreign workers in India have been given until the end of today to be out of that country in a visa clampdown which is designed to protect Indian labourers from outside competition.
The Indian government has announced the measures to protect its workforce from being undercut by cheaper foreign labourers, who come from South East Asian countries.
The clampdown will also affect all expatriates working in India on business visas. Under the new regulations, a smaller number of such visas will be issued. This is to protect skilled workers as well.
Those who fail to meet the government’s new criteria for the business visa have to leave India by midnight and can only return if they meet the stricter criteria for a full employment visa.
“If a foreign national is employed in India, he must have the right kind of visa,” Home Secretary G.K. Pillai said in New Delhi this week.
The number of expatriates affected by the change was not known, but experts said they expected thousands to be caught in the net.
Viral Thakkar, a partner at global consultancy firm KPMG in Mumbai, said he saw the stricter rules as aimed at keeping foreigners out of semi-skilled jobs. “It is more of a restriction on semi-skilled labour coming to India,” Mr Thakkar said.
Under the amended rules, foreign clerical, secretarial and unskilled workers will not be given work visas in India, where economists say unemployment and under-employment is rampant.
Employment visas will not be “granted for jobs for which large numbers of qualified Indians are available,” the Home Ministry said.
Indian media reports have said the clampdown will specially hit around 25,000 Chinese with business visas who currently work in power, communication and petroleum sector projects in India.
* No one has accused the Indian government of “racism” or “xenophobia” for wanting to protect its workers from outside competition. This is correct, as the Indian move is aimed not out of hatred for anyone else, but from a natural and instinctive need to look after one’s own national interests first.
The British National Party fully endorses the Indian government’s moves. This is also the BNP’s policy: there is no reason at all why British workers should have to compete for jobs in their own country against outsiders.
Foreign workers are often “cheaper” because their overheads are lower and hence they do not need as high a wage. Allowing “cheaper” labour to undermine indigenous workers is, however, massively short-sighted.
An economy’s growth is dependent upon a population having spending power to buy goods produced in the manufacturing process. If increasing numbers of the local population are out of work, there will be no disposable income and the market will shrink.
This in turn will cause the economy to decline — and will drive the employers who are responsible for using the ‘cheaper’ labour out of business as well.
British workers need to be protected — and only the BNP’s policies can guarantee this.
