AN SNP MP has insisted that there would not need to be border checks as part of his bid to introduce a bespoke visa scheme for Scotland.
Stephen Gethins, Arbroath and Broughty Ferry MP, has proposed a private member’s bill in the House of Commons which would devolve more powers over immigration to Holyrood.
This would help to increase workforce numbers in areas hit hard by Brexit, such as hospitality, tourism, and the care sector.
If passed, the bill would amend the Scotland Act 1998 to allow the Scottish Government to set up a Scottish visa.
Speaking on Sky News, Gethins pointed out that the plan had been proposed by former Tory minister Michael Gove before the EU referendum and discussed by Scottish Labour ahead of the last General Election.
He was asked by the broadcaster if a separate immigration for Scotland would need border checks.
“No, this is something that works elsewhere,” he said.
“You’ve got Australia and Canada have a system of more decentralized migration.
“It's also something the Law Society of Scotland have looked at and endorsed, and it's something that think tanks like Reform Scotland [and] David Hume Institute have looked at as well.
Gethins (above) was asked if without border checks, he was basically “calling for higher immigration for the whole UK”.
He replied: “Well, no, you’re not because you’ve got a different tax system in Scotland, so you could set that up. This also works elsewhere.
“You know, I sit in these studios in London and often get this kind of exceptionalism, well, we couldn't possibly do it, when people are doing this all over the world.
“You can have that decentralized migration, and we don't need a one size fits all [approach].
“There's no one size fits all for the economy and other sectors. So why have the same migration system, say for London than the South East of England, as you do for rural Scotland where the tourism sector have called for this, the hospitality sector, going back to the care sector, we’ll all need the care sector at some point.”
Asked if calling for migration mean that there weren’t workers in Scotland with the skills to fill those positions, Gethins explained: “We saw in the aftermath of Brexit, where we shut off migration from the EU, but we ourselves lost the right to go and live and work elsewhere in the EU.
“We saw enormously high migration under Boris Johnson to plug the gaps in the workforce.
“Migration is not a new thing. It's something that's been going on for centuries.
“It grows our economy. We're not talking about unlimited migration, and remember, in Scotland and elsewhere, we've also got the challenge of emigration.
“This is something that's been going on for centuries, with a much more sensible debate about migration than that we've seen in recent years.”
Gethins’ Devolution (Immigration) (Scotland) Bill is set to have its second reading in the Commons on Friday.
It comes after Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar was urged to back the visa scheme’s introduction.
