`Hot’ immigration rules

Immigration restrictions mean that many of Britain’s Indian restaurants are having to `curry on’ without genuine Indian waiters.

Most of the `Indian’ restaurants in Britain are owned and staffed by people from Bangladesh rather than from India, but it’s been more difficult for Bangladeshis to emigrate to Britain to work in Indian restaurants since new immigration rules were introduced in 2005. 
The Bangladesh Caterers’ Association, which represents 12,000 curry house owners, said that there is a shortage of 27,500 workers in Bangladeshi-owned restaurants, out of a total workforce of some 90,000.
Keith Best, the head of the Immigration advisory service, a charity which is lobbying the government to ease the restrictions, said that the industry contributes 3.5 billion pounds to the British economy each year.
He said that the government seemed to hope that the vacancies would be filled by migrants from Eastern Europe. Hundreds of thousands of migrants from Eastern Europe, mostly from Poland, the Czech Republic and other former communist countries, have moved to Britain since it joined the EU.
The Border and Immigration Agency said the government’s new points-based immigration system,which is designed to match immigrants’ skills with labour market needs, was designed to “simplify the rules, ensuring that that those with the right skills to benefit Britain can come here to contribute.”
The agency said it had set up a committee to advise on any shortage of skills in specific sectors of industry,  including the `ethnic cuisine sector’.
 If the committee decided that there was a shortage of skilled workers, it could set up a category of permits for workers in these sectors, under the second phase of the government’s points-based immigration system which is due to come into effect later this year.