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> Immigration is not actually something you need to have. It's something the UK needs to have. We don't have enough qualified doctors, nurses, AHPs, civil engi

by DanBC 6y ago

> Immigration is not actually something you need to have. It's something the UK needs to have. We don't have enough qualified doctors, nurses, AHPs, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, electronic engineers, (any engineers), architects, etc etc etc.

thaumasiotes 6y ago
The steady state for this kind of thing is a very long credentialing process that mostly serves to constrict [word choice is deliberate] entry into the field(s). In the absence of immigration, assuming the void you describe were perceived, I would expect the UK to accelerate the qualification process for doctors, engineers, nurses, AHPs, engineers, architects, etc., without much affecting the quality of the doctoring / nursing / engineering that got done. This is, for example, how people were trained to understand spoken Japanese when that became important in World War II. The first attempt involved approaching universities with Japanese programs, who all solemnly declared that learning to understand Japanese was a deliberate process involving multiple years of study. The second attempt involved a course developed for the purpose, not by the universities, that turned out functioning translators in six months.
- DanBC 6y ago
  > without much affecting the quality of the doctoring / nursing In England "registered nurse" is a protected title. The requirements for being a registered nurse have changed over time. You used to be able to qualify then register, or work then register without getting the qualification. So we have a natural experiment with older nurses in England. Some are qualified and registered, some are unqualified and registered. We see from research that the qualification helps with patient safety. I hope you can see that there are significant differences between learning a language and treating patients.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    > So we have a natural experiment with older nurses in England. Some are qualified and registered, some are unqualified and registered. We see from research that the qualification helps with patient safety. As described, you see from research that nurses with the qualification are better than nurses in the same cohort without. This is confounded all kinds of different ways; it doesn't come close to establishing that the qualification helped. (The most obvious confound, though -- say, do nurses with a bachelor's degree outperform nurses with "some college"? -- does tend to suggest that, in the absence of immigration, overall quality levels will go down if the average quality of immigrants is higher than the average quality of natives.) > I hope you can see that there are significant differences between learning a language and treating patients. Of course, but I don't see that those differences are relevant here.

by DanBC 6y ago

thaumasiotes 6y ago

The steady state for this kind of thing is a very long credentialing process that mostly serves to constrict [word choice is deliberate] entry into the field(s). In the absence of immigration, assuming the void you describe were perceived, I would expect the UK to accelerate the qualification process for doctors, engineers, nurses, AHPs, engineers, architects, etc., without much affecting the quality of the doctoring / nursing / engineering that got done. This is, for example, how people were trained to understand spoken Japanese when that became important in World War II. The first attempt involved approaching universities with Japanese programs, who all solemnly declared that learning to understand Japanese was a deliberate process involving multiple years of study. The second attempt involved a course developed for the purpose, not by the universities, that turned out functioning translators in six months.

DanBC 6y ago
> without much affecting the quality of the doctoring / nursing In England "registered nurse" is a protected title. The requirements for being a registered nurse have changed over time. You used to be able to qualify then register, or work then register without getting the qualification. So we have a natural experiment with older nurses in England. Some are qualified and registered, some are unqualified and registered. We see from research that the qualification helps with patient safety. I hope you can see that there are significant differences between learning a language and treating patients.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > So we have a natural experiment with older nurses in England. Some are qualified and registered, some are unqualified and registered. We see from research that the qualification helps with patient safety. As described, you see from research that nurses with the qualification are better than nurses in the same cohort without. This is confounded all kinds of different ways; it doesn't come close to establishing that the qualification helped. (The most obvious confound, though -- say, do nurses with a bachelor's degree outperform nurses with "some college"? -- does tend to suggest that, in the absence of immigration, overall quality levels will go down if the average quality of immigrants is higher than the average quality of natives.) > I hope you can see that there are significant differences between learning a language and treating patients. Of course, but I don't see that those differences are relevant here.