Priti Patel will this week be challenged to honour her vow to restore ‘integrity’ to Britain’s immigration system by insisting all immigrant workers must earn at least £36,700 after Brexit.

The Home Secretary will be urged to hike the proposed £30,000 minimum salary threshold for all new foreign workers to protect lower-paid, UK-born employees.

Currently, the restriction only applies to non-EU migrants but is set to be extended to EU workers after Brexit.

The Home Secretary will be urged to hike the proposed £30,000 minimum salary threshold for all new foreign workers to protect lower-paid, UK-born employees. She is pictured in Dover meeting with port officials this week

The call for the threshold increase, from the Centre for Social Justice, is coupled with a warning that record levels of low-skilled immigration in recent years have pushed down wages for those born in the UK on lower salaries.

In a report to be published tomorrow, the influential centre-Right think-tank also highlights the surge in immigration.

It warns that over the past 50 years, the population has grown by more than ten million – 60 per cent of which is due to immigration. The public believe immigration should be curbed, with around two-thirds believing current levels are too high, the CSJ says.

Priti Patel will this week be challenged to honour her vow to restore ‘integrity’ to Britain’s immigration system by insisting all immigrant workers must earn at least £36,700 after Brexit

The new report comes after Ms Patel, the daughter of Ugandan immigrants, vowed to restore ‘integrity’ to the immigration system but said it should not be a ‘superficial numbers game’.

It also follows Boris Johnson’s announcement of reforms to visa applications to fast-track the ‘brightest minds from around the world’ after Brexit.

But the new report calls for action at the other end of the wage scale – warning the minimum salary threshold should be raised to a level ‘commensurate with the status of skilled workers’.

And it says the Home Office could still exempt key sectors, such as the NHS, to allow workers earning under £36,700 to continue to come to the UK to work.

A review and reform of family-related visas, of which there were 134,789 granted in 2018, should also be carried out.

Overall, the think-tank says that while immigration has been a net positive for the British ‘fiscal purse’, much of the population have not benefited.

The significant increase in low-skilled immigration has helped put downward pressure on wages for UK-born workers at the bottom of the income spectrum as well as arguably reduced social mobility.

The CSJ also argued it was ‘high time’ the Government took seriously the problem of endemic poverty in immigrant and minority communities.

The new report comes after Ms Patel, the daughter of Ugandan immigrants, vowed to restore ‘integrity’ to the immigration system but said it should not be a ‘superficial numbers game’. It also follows Boris Johnson’s announcement of reforms to visa applications to fast-track the ‘brightest minds from around the world’ after Brexit [File photo]

It cited Small Heath in Birmingham as having one of the largest Bengali and Pakistani communities in the country and is concurrently in the 10 per cent most deprived areas in the UK, according to the Government’s Index of Multiple Deprivation.

CSJ policy director Edward Davies said: ‘Since 1971 our population has grown by 10.1 million. Immigration has contributed 61 per cent of that growth.

‘We must have a thorough and discerning policy approach towards immigration.

‘The reality is that high levels of low-skilled immigration have suppressed wages and reduced levels of social mobility. There are real problems of poverty and social breakdown in some immigrant communities.’

The solution was ‘developing a framework that makes entry standards higher for economic migrants but is more generous towards those who have had to flee their home countries.

‘This would boost the UK economy and public services.’