Immigrants don't like Scotland

Scotland is finding it hard to attract immigrants:

JACK McConnell’s flagship policy of attracting immigrants to Scotland has been undermined by new government figures showing the country is drawing a disproportionately small number of new workers.

The official statistics also threaten to undercut the First Minister’s statement on Sunday that there were no reliable data on which to judge the success of his Fresh Talent initiative.

Scotland attracted only 6.5 per cent of the workers who came to Britain from those Eastern European countries that joined the European Union last year, official figures show. That falls short of Scotland’s 8.4 per cent share of the UK population.

In all, Scotland received 7,995 of the 122,770 successful applications for permission to work from new EU citizens last year. London had 27,215, and the Anglia region of eastern England received 21,425.

Nor were the new workers the highly skilled migrants that the Scottish Executive values most. Only 725 - 9 per cent - of those registering as employed in Scotland were doing "administration, management or business" work.

That was the lowest proportion of such workers of any UK region. In contrast, 40 per cent of those who registered in the English Midlands were employed in the managerial sector. UK-wide, 24 per cent of all the new workers were administrators and managers.

If Scotland needs people then why doesn't the British government offer financial incentives to the British colonists in the north of Ireland to move to Scotland? This solution would solve both the problems of Scotland and those of the north of Ireland.