India has cautioned Britain that it would be the “loser” if its immigration laws are not liberalised to allow freer movement of workers from the sub-continent nation.“Short of permanent immigration, we are asking for freer movement of personnel who can render services abroad,” the Finance Minister told The Times. His comments come as many highly skilled Indians — entrepreneurs, scientists, doctors and IT specialists — find it impossible to stay in Britain since changes to a migrant programme in November. The changes to the Highly Skilled Migrants Programme (HSMP), which was applied retrospectively, lays greater emphasis on earnings and education than work experience. “Many knowledge workers could go abroad for three months, six months or a year and add to our exports, but they are constrained by a very restrictive visa regime and local tax laws,” Chidambaram said.Indians are the largest national group affected by the new rules.“If a qualified professional from India is denied entry and that place is taken by a less qualified person from, say, Eastern Europe, surely the UK is the loser,” he said. A strong believer in free trade, Chidambaram, 61, pledged that India would “play more than our part” in the revival of the stalled Doha round of WTO talks.“We believe that the opening up of trade has helped India considerably. In fact, a significant proportion of our growth is coming from external trade. Exports last year were $103 billion,” he said. Bank of Baroda is among the leading banks in India and currently has 60 offices in 21 countries and within India it has 2,700 branches. The UK operation accounted for 40 per cent of the Bank’s global operation.
