来源：《每日电讯报》
原文刊登日期：2022年5月30日
Many people who supported Brexit did so because they thought it would reduce immigration. Yet the most recent figures show the numbers arriving in the country to be higher than ever – higher, indeed, than at any time in our history.
许多支持脱欧的人这样做是因为他们认为脱欧会减少移民。然而，最近的数据显示，移民到英国的人数比以往任何时候都要多——事实上，比我们历史上任何时候都要多。
Over the past 12 months, work visas are up 25 per cent to 239,987, family visas are up 49 per cent to 280,776 and student visas are up 52 per cent to 432,729. That is nearly one million visas granted. A few years ago such a large rise in immigration would have triggered a ferocious political argument, yet it has hardly featured as a subject among the recent succession of crises to embroil Boris Johnson.
过去12个月，工作签证增长25%，至239987份，家庭签证增长49%，至280776份，学生签证增长52%，至432729份。这相当于发放了近100万份签证。几年前，如此大规模的移民潮可能会引发一场激烈的政治争论，但在鲍里斯•约翰逊最近卷入的一系列危机中，这几乎没有成为一个主题。
Mr Johnson has always been more relaxed about immigration than many of his colleagues. He maintains that his support for Brexit was not motivated by a desire to reduce overall numbers – an ambition of his two immediate predecessors, though one not realised by either – but to reassert control over who could and could not come to the UK.
在移民问题上，约翰逊先生总是比他的许多同事更加放松。他坚持认为，他支持英国脱欧的动机不是减少总人数——这是他两位前任的雄心壮志，尽管两位前任都没有实现——而是重新控制谁可以和不可以来英国。
This is underpinned by a points-based system which will try to attract graduates from the world’s top universities by way of a new visa scheme, which Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, said would “put ability and talent first, not where someone comes from”.
这是以积分制为基础的，该制度将试图通过一项新的签证计划吸引世界顶尖大学的毕业生。内政大臣普里蒂·帕特尔表示，该计划将“把能力和才华放在首位，而不是一个人来自哪里”。
However, many of the manpower problems facing the economy at the moment are not linked to high achievers but to the dearth of people in lower skilled jobs. This should be addressed from within the settled population where there has been a fall in the number of people working compared with before the pandemic. People have dropped out of the workforce not because of a want of jobs: vacancies exceed the number of those looking for work and the unemployment rate is the lowest since the 1970s. There has been a mass departure of older workers and a sharp rise in people reporting long-term illnesses, trends that are worse in the UK than in other comparable countries.
然而，目前经济面临的许多人力问题与高成就者无关，而是与低技能工作人员的缺乏有关。这应该从定居人口内部解决，因为与大流行病之前相比，定居人口的工作人数有所下降。人们退出劳动力市场并不是因为缺少工作：职位空缺超过了找工作的人数，失业率是20世纪70年代以来的最低水平。老年工人大量离职，报告长期疾病的人数急剧上升，英国的趋势比其他类似国家更糟。
Attracting high-value graduates is one thing, but the Government needs to give far more thought to what to do about the pressures facing sectors like retail, hospitality and construction as well as the NHS and social care. These labour shortages risk exacerbating the stagflationary tendencies already in evidence.
吸引高价值的毕业生是一回事，但政府需要更多地考虑如何应对零售、酒店和建筑等行业以及NHS和社会护理所面临的压力。这些劳动力短缺有可能加剧已经存在的滞胀趋势。