I am a tradesman with a lot of technical skills with some specialized skills in short supply (at least in the US) with a little less than a decade of experience. My partner is a skilled social worker with more than a decade of experience.
We cannot afford a golden visa in any country.
We are at least 3rd generation Americans, and do not have the right to claim citizenship in any other country without going through the immigration and naturalization process there.
Neither of us is very good at picking up a new language (lord how I’ve tried)
Where could we realistically look to go?
Lol, I’m from the UK and employ quite a few overseas people. Immigration requirements are categorically not ‘loose’.
A properly qualified social worker might actually have a chance of being on the occupational shortage list but I can’t think of any trades where and employer would be able to prove they need to hire from abroad and be willing to sponsor the employee.
AFAIK UK had largest increase of immigration after Brexit since decades. How come?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/283287/net-migration-figures-of-the-united-kingdom-y-on-y/
There’s several factors:
It’s hard to tell from your link whether people from EU countries that applied for citizenship because Brexit changed their status counts in those figures. That would be a lot of people in 2021, 22 and 23 which iirc was the window to do that.
Similarly a lot of skilled workers from the EU left in that period and were replaced with non-eu workers. The EU leavers might not be counted in net migration.
Students sometimes are counted in migration figures and sometimes not. We have a lot of overseas students and obviously post COVID the figures surged.
A large proportion is healthcare, either in the NHS directly or in care homes for the elderly. Because of our ageing population the health system is expanding beyond the ability to train new care staff.
So… Many factors but definitely not “just letting anyone in”.