The UK government during elections had committed to reduce the net immigration from the current 200,000 to tens of thousands. The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) published the report on 18th November 2010 on the prescribed level in non-EU skilled immigration to the government. The report highlights the huge task ahead of the government with a commitment like this.

MAC has not directly stated the merits of this policy of the government however; they do acknowledge the high number of queries sent to their consultation in this regard. They receive on an average around 400 responses expressing the concern over reducing migration and how the government is actually planning to implement the same.

It is said that to reach a goal of 50,000 migrants, the non-EU net immigration has to come down by 146,000 by the end of the parliamentary session.

BBC reported that to achieve the current goal on capping net immigration, the non-EU migration has to hang somewhere between 13%-25%. To achieve the overall goal, this lessening should not only be imposed to the coming years 2011-12 but, be applied for the next four years for the net immigration of the skilled migrants to drop down by 50%, and most likely reach 100% by the year 2015.

MAC says that to achieve the goals on capping the net immigration to the levels committed by the government, would not happen only by stopping the non-EU skilled immigration. To get the immigration numbers to tens of thousands the student and family categories should also face reduction.

Handling these issues is a big problem for the government. This migration reduction could raise a lot of social, economical and humanitarian related questions.

It is nice that the government is planning to address the public concern on the high numbers of net immigration. However, the policy of the government should be realistic and more sensible. Such promises could have a negative influence on businesses, public services, technology and arts.