Dr Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, said the government faced a “trade-off” between “ensuring migrants speak good English and enabling employers to recruit workers who are expected to bring economic benefits.”
Many graduate jobs already require language skills above A-level standard, she said.
The new language requirements will have “more impact in middle-skilled jobs involving technical and manual skills, where employers sometimes do not require high language proficiency”.
Immigration lawyer Afsana Akhtar told BBC News she thought it was “unfair” that migrants had to reach such a high standard of English “because even many people in the UK probably wouldn’t be able to pass English A-level”.
“This would rule out even skilled workers who want to come and contribute to our British economy,” she said.
“The GCSE standard is sufficient – and then when they come live here, [and] integrate into England and the English way of life, their English will improve inevitably.”
Other measures in the white paper include cutting the time period international students can stay in the UK to find a graduate job after their course ends from two years to 18 months, which will take effect from January 2027.
Students will also have to meet higher financial requirements, raised to £1,171 per month outside London (from £1,136) for up to nine months.
The Global Talent visa, for high achievers in technology, arts and academia fields has also been expanded to include winners of more prestigious prizes.
Further plans in the White Paper include, the immigration skills charge for UK employers to pay when sponsoring foreign workers on specific visas has also been increased to £480 per person per year for small organisations or charities, and to £1,320 for medium and large organisations.
This is raised from £364 and £1,000 respectively.
As part of the government’s efforts to attract highly skilled people to the country, the HPI route will be expanded. The number of migrants on the visa is expected to double from 2,000 to 4,000, but there will be a cap of 8,000 applications each year.
