London (AFP) Britain`s embattled Conservative government unveiled a raft of measures Monday aimed at cracking down on record levels of migration a key battleground in a general election expected next year. Home Secretary James Cleverly unveiled proposals to cut regular migration. The UK announced it would raise the minimum salary threshold for a skilled worker visa and prevent overseas health and social care staff from bringing family dependents to Britain.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak`s office trumpeted the proposals as `the biggest clampdown on legal migration ever`.
But critics said it would damage the state-run National Health Service (NHS), which faces staff shortages.
Immigration is set to be a key issue in nationwide elections that must be held by January 2025 at the latest, and which the main opposition Labour party is currently favoured to win.
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Sunak has pledged to reduce new arrivals and has been under pressure ever since statistics released last month showed that net migration to Britain hit a high in 2022.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the number of people who arrived in Britain last year was 745,000 more than the number who left.
Interior minister James Cleverly said his plan would result in 300,000 fewer people coming to the UK in the coming years.
`Enough is enough,` the home secretary told parliament as he laid out his proposals, which will take effect early next year.
Cleverly said skilled foreign workers wanting a UK visa would have to earn £38,700 ($48,860), up from £26,200 and in line with the median full-time wage.
He exempted health and social care workers, but said they would be prevented from bringing family dependents.
NHS Providers, which represents hospital groups in England, said changes that might deter care workers from coming to the UK were `deeply concerning`.
Care England, a charity representing independent adult social care providers, said immigration had been `saving the social care sector`. Staff shortages have been exacerbated by Brexit.
Cleverly also raised the minimum income for family visas to £38,700 and confirmed restrictions on international students bringing

dependents.
He reaffirmed that Britain would increase the surcharge that migrants pay to access the NHS by 66 percent, to £1,035.
Critics have said this effectively imposes a double charge on migrant workers, as employees also pay National Insurance charges, which go towards covering healthcare.
`Do or die`
Cleverly added that the government would reform the `shortage occupation list`, which details jobs for which employers are not able to find enough British workers.
The Conservatives won a landslide under the leadership of Boris Johnson at the last election in 2019, largely on a promise to bring net migration numbers down.
The party has repeatedly promised that leaving the European Union, which ended the free movement of people from member states, would allow the UK to `take back control` of its borders.
But regular migration has soared since Britain formally left the EU in January 2020. In 2021, net migration was 488,000.
The ONS data piled pressure on Sunak from his own MPs to take action, with some right-wingers arguing that the issue was `do or die` for the party.
In opinion polls, the Tories, in power since 2010, lag well behind centre-left Labour, which also claims regular migration is too high.
Labour`s home affairs spokesperson Yvette Cooper accused the Conservatives of being in a `chaotic panic` over immigration.
`Today`s statement is an admission of years of total failure by this Conservative government,` she told parliament.
Sunak is also struggling to cut the number of irregular arrivals crossing the Channel from northern France on small boats.
About 30,000 have undertaken the dangerous crossing this year.
The government has deemed such crossings illegal but its much-trumpeted plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda was struck down by the courts last month.
Cleverly is due to visit Kigali soon, possibly this week, to finalise a new treaty. The government has also said it is working on `emergency legislation` to get deportation flights going by spring. V.5106

There are fears that more people will be separated by the introduction of a minimum salary level for those wanting UK family visas. Families living in the UK and abroad have raised concerns about what new rules will mean for them as they try to reunite with foreign spouses. In December, the Home Office, which says migration to the UK is too high, announced a package of measures to reduce net migration, following a spike in arrival numbers. V.5318
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An Ethiopian asylum seeker, who does not speak English, claims he was duped by a senior immigration official into paying an admission of guilt fine when he thought he was paying for bail.Two Western Cape High Court judges have condemned the official`s `deplorable` behaviour, set aside the fine, and ordered the immigration official be taken off the case. Tsegaye Esyas claims Annelise van Dyk treated him like an animal which led to him attempt suicide while in police cells. V.5320
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EREMY MAGGS: I want to stay with crime now. Individuals with a criminal record may be faced with significant challenges when seeking employment, I think that’s a given. Here in South Africa, employers may legally exclude an applicant from consideration for a position if having a clean criminal record is what is termed an inherent requirement of the job. That phrase, inherent requirement, is important, but what exactly does that mean, and when can an applicant be lawfully excluded for having a criminal record? V.5321
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As a South African who has adopted a nomadic work lifestyle alongside my wife, Ingrid Lotze, I’ve been an interested observer of South Africa’s snail-pace digital nomad visa (DNV) development process. Despite the optimism surrounding its introduction, the visa seems to miss several crucial marks for digital nomads like us. V.5322
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DA MP says hours lost continue to result in persons being unable to collect their ID documents due to unmanageable queues The DA has been inundated with complaints that the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) systems are offline, resulting in long queues and delayed processing of documents. Through questions posed to the Minister, the DA can now reveal that the DHA has lost over 77 years’ worth of working hours due to system downtime and load-shedding from 2019 to date. Concerningly, this data only relates to hours lost for the application of smart IDs, meaning decades more of working hours could have been additionally lost in other spheres such as passport or visa applications. V.5314
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Home Affairs’ seemingly endless court battles set the department back more than R110-million between April 2023 and the end of February this year. This was revealed in a written parliamentary response by minister Aaron Motsoaledi. He said the department accumulated a litigation bill of R117 692 996.3, higher than the R72 637 944.51 spent the year before. V.5315
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Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) this week revealed that Cape Town International Airport (CTIA) has achieved a ground-breaking milestone by processing more than 10 million passengers over a single financial year. This is the highest number of regional and international passengers processed since COVID-19 V.5316
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In recent years, South Africa has seen a significant influx of immigrants from various African countries, as well as other parts of the world. This has raised important questions about the country`s immigration policies and their impact on job creation for both locals and immigrants. The South African immigration system, like many other countries, is a complex and ever-evolving process that aims to balance the country`s economic needs with its social and cultural interests. Let`s take a closer look at how this system intersects with job creation in South Africa. The South African government implemented the Immigration Act of 2002, which outlines the country`s immigration policies and procedures. Under this act, foreigners are required to obtain a visa or permit to enter, work, or study in South Africa. The type of visa or permit required depends on the intended purpose of the individual`s visit and their country of origin. V.5312
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Due to system downtime and load-shedding, the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) lost nearly 141,000 hours of Smart ID application and production time between the 2019/20 and 2022/23 financial years. Minister Aaron Motsoaledi revealed this figure in a recent response to questions raised in Parliament by Democratic Alliance MP Adrian Roos. Motsoaledi provided a breakdown of smart ID production and application hours lost to technical difficulties and load-shedding per province for each financial year from 2019/2020. These disruptions hit home Affairs offices in the Eastern Cape the hardest, with over 34,000 hours to rotational power cuts and system downtime. Mpumalanga offices lost the next-highest number of hours at 17 V.5313
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Home Affairs Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi has said the public has shown great support for the final White Paper on citizenship, immigration and refugee protection which appeared in the Government Gazette on Wednesday. Briefing the media, he addressed what he saw as a long-overdue need to replace an outdated Citizenship Act, as well as enact proposed changes to existing legislation. V.5306
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