Sylhet must be nearly empty by now

Most of the chefs in Indian restaurants in the UK came originally from a town in Bangladesh called Sylhet. I saw this article on the BBC but negleted to comment upon it. Appratently, "Curry houses 'need more migrants' - The Home Office is being urged to ease restrictions on migrant workers entering Britain from Bangladesh, to avert a crisis in the curry industry. Curry houses are struggling to fill thousands of kitchen staff vacancies, says the Immigration Advisory Service. For years, many staff in the UK's 9,000 curry restaurants have been recruited directly from Bangladesh. But restrictions on the workers have been tighter since eastern Europeans were given employment rights. It is thought the curry industry in the UK employs at least 50,000 people, with the majority of restaurants Bangladeshi-owned."

It seemed odd to me and I was just going to question why the British government was meant to allow more immigration just to satisfy the needs of Indian restaurants. Can they not train people from the existing UK population to do the work, I believe that unemployment amongst the UK population of Bangladeshi descent is rather high? Maybe it would be a better idea to get some of that community of benefits and into work rather than importing more labour.

Then I read in Wikipedia that "As so many Sylhetis are resident abroad, Sylhet has a major flow of foreign currency from non-resident Bangladeshis; many Sylheti families' sole source of income comes from relatives abroad and this attracts influx migrant workers and families from other parts of Bangladesh, earning livings by peddling rickshows, working as servants and peasants, particularly people from Comilla, Noakhali, Mymensingh and Barisal are found lower denomination jobs in Sylhet." So the UK government policy appears to be to allow people from Sylhet into the UK to work in Indian restaurants, then to support them via the benefits system when they decide that such work is too hard, then to allow replacements to come to the UK to fill the vacancies and all the while allowing money paid in wages and, no doubt, benefits to be repatriated to Bangladesh. What a great system.



Edland has a rather nice take on this story "Read between the lines and you can quickly see what is really going on. People are lured from Bangladesh on the promise of a better life in the UK. They are promised a job in a distant relation's restaurant. Not long after they get here, they realise what millions of other Britons have realised: that toiling for minimum wage isn't much fun when a generous welfare system is in place. A vacancy then appears and what better (sorry easier and cheaper) way to fill it than with another Bangladeshi lured on the promise of a better life in the UK? Why bother getting extant Bangladeshis (or Brits or Poles for that matter) into work when you can fly in cheaper labour by the dozen? For "cultural differences" read "chefs and managers cannot be bothered to learn English or train their employees". Perhaps what really needs to happen is for the curry entrepreneurs to start paying their staff a living wage and to ask the customer community to pay a little more."

I think you may be right Mr Edland, and rather well put as well.