MANAGED MIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP
adverse impact of the recommended changes on the care sector in general and to put back all categories of nursing onto the shortage list. The health sector report commissioned by MAC (Bach, 2008) concludes that it is necessary to think of future shortages when it may not be possible to attract personnel given global shortages. MAC has stated that it will review some occupations by March 2009, including a number from the health sector, social work, care assistants, home carers, and nursery, primary and secondary teachers. 2.6 Equality Impact Assessment In its EIA, UKBA considered that the potential impact on all seven equality groups was minimal but, where there were negative effects, ‘there are strong policy reasons for them, namely to ensure that the immigration category fulfils its aim of selecting the people who will succeed as skilled migrants and be contributing to the growth and productivity of the UK without displacing British workers’. Race: As for tier 1, the Home Office is exempt from the general duty of Section 71 of the Race Relations Act 1976 to promote equality of opportunity between persons of different racial groups in carrying out its immigration and nationality functions (see discussion about tier 1). It is still required to promote good relations between groups, but UKBA considers that the introduction of tier 2 (General) will not make it harder for non-EEA nationals of certain countries than for those of others to apply and be successful. As with tier 1, UKBA has used nationality as a surrogate for race. It states that the monitoring of work permits since January 2006 to December 2007 has shown there has been little change in the pattern of initial applications, although total applications approved were slightly down from 144,970 in 2006 to 131,072 in 2007. The top 10 nationalities for work permit applications remained the same in 2006 and 2007: Australia, Canada, China, India, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, South Africa, Philippines and United States. However, some of the nationalities tended to earn disproportionately less than £17,000. UKBA suggests that this might be overcome by placing the lower-paid occupations on the shortage list (but see previous comments on criteria being used by MAC to determine the shortage list). It is likely that the new tier arrangements will have an uneven impact in terms of nationality and race, particularly with the appropriate annual salary being set at the high level of £24,000. Gender inequalities: These too, are discussed at length in the EIA. The number of permits granted to women as a percentage of the total has declined from 36 per cent in 2005 to 32 per cent in 2006, probably because of the fall in health professionals and associate professionals in particular (the latter having dropped from 39.9 per cent of total permits in 2005 to 24.7 per cent of permits in 2006) (Salt, 2007). The assessment itself excludes from consideration both the difficulties some groups may have in accessing this tier due to social, educational and economic inequalities in 35