Have jobs, have jobless – why bring in foreign workers?

This comment is in response to Norman De Bono’s London Free press article, Workforce Has Wrong Skills.

The Royal Bank and LEDC stated the London workforce has a ‘skills mismatch’ when compared to the future needs of businesses.  This revelation occurred during plant shutdowns and an increase to 9% unemployment.

The article states the answer is to bring in foreign workers to fill the void.  Perhaps it might be beneficial, but I think it makes more sense to retrain an existing workforce to perform the jobs that will be required in the future, than to bring additional people from outside into our existing labour pool.  Redeploying our current workforce could result in a more vibrant local economy, which, in turn, would ease many other issues facing Londoners today; the housing market would stabilize, fewer people would potentially default on their mortgages, declare bankruptcy, etc.

We have jobs that need filling, and we have people to fill them.  What’s missing is the training, because nobody wants to pay for it.  So we turn to pre-trained foreign workers, who cost more to employ, and leave Londoners jobless.  Why not take the budget that would be spent on the foreign workers and apply it to training Londoners?

Somebody tell me how this makes sense.

Original article can be found here.