Migration - Meeting Scotland's Needs

Vision and Values

1. The Scottish Government has set out four key priorities: eradicating child poverty, growing the economy, tackling the climate emergency, and ensuring high quality and sustainable public services. In order to deliver those priorities, we need to ensure that we have a workforce with the skills and experience to grow the economy and deliver the public services that we need.

2. Migration is important for economic growth, but it is not only a feature of aggregate supply and demand: the positive impacts of migration are felt across Scotland’s communities. A tailored, responsive and humane migration policy can help improve outcomes through a positive impact on productivity, increasing innovation and knowledge transfer, and contributing to economic growth and sustainability of public finances, as well as enhancing diversity and connections within communities.

3. Framing migration solely as a discussion about whether numbers go up or down is unhelpful. Instead, our focus should be on the needs of Scotland’s economy, public services and communities, and setting out how migration can support those needs.

4. The Scottish Government has previously set out seven principles to underpin migration policy. These principles remain relevant and should continue to underpin migration policy development.

i. Migration policy should address the needs of all of Scotland, including those areas most at risk of depopulation.

ii. Migration policy should encourage and enable long-term settlement in Scotland, welcoming people with the range of skills we need to work, raise families and make a positive contribution to society.

iii. Scotland should be able to attract talented and committed people from Europe and across the world to work and study here without excessive barriers, and our migration policy should support mobility, collaboration and innovation.

iv. Migration policy should support fair work, protecting workers’ rights, pay and access to employment and preventing exploitation and abuse.

v. People who are entitled to live in Scotland – both international migrants and UK citizens – should be able to bring close family with them and migrants should have access to services and support to encourage integration into communities.

vi. The migration system should be easy to access and understand and focused on what a prospective migrant can contribute, not on their ability to pay – therefore fees and charges should be proportionate.

vii. Migration should be controlled to deter and prevent abuse, fraud and criminal activity, including terrorism, human trafficking and other serious offences.

5. This short paper outlines Scotland’s distinct demographic challenge, the economic impacts of migration and the impact of changes to the migration system over the last year, before outlining policy options designed to ensure that the migration system meets Scotland’s needs.