Nowadays, the UK tends to take a build-it-and-they-will-come approach to attracting the world’s top scientific and innovative talent. We find ways to lower barriers to entry and make the country generally more attractive to skilled immigrants. But there are potential lessons from the past: beyond just liberal immigration rules for skilled workers, the UK has a long history of proactively identifying and persuading skilled workers to settle in the country – a policy that we might call promigration.
In the sixteenth century, for example, the government actively sought the services of foreign workers who might introduce new industries. Lacking local expertise to mine and refine copper, zinc, and silver, it arranged for hundreds of German metallurgists and their families to come to the country, with the eventual result of kick-starting Britain’s copper and brass industries. The foreign workers were granted denizenship rights by letters patent, and patent monopolies were granted to the companies that employed them. Even the go-betweens, who identified the relevant workers in Germany and arranged for their travel to England, were rewarded with lucrative lifetime pensions. After all, knowing whom to attract, especially when such industries were almost entirely absent in England, was an important skill too.
In the 1620s, too, skilled civil engineers like Cornelius Vermuyden were invited from the Netherlands to undertake the levelling of the Fens. Although the Fens project itself initially fell through, Vermuyden was apparently persuaded to remain by being given other commissions, and was naturalised as an English subject in 1624 – something that at the time would have required a special Act of Parliament. He was also soon knighted, and in the 1630s able to use his influence to obtain the denization of other Dutch workmen for new drainage projects.
Yet Britain was not alone in its promigration policies. In the 1710s, the Russian state actively enticed English ironworkers and steelmakers, and the French state used a go-between, Henry Sully, to bring English watchmakers and metallurgists to France by offering high wages and other perks. Many of those who left were manufacturers who had fallen into debt, and leapt at the chance for free travel abroad, thereby escaping their creditors and at the same time obtaining secure employment. With Britain having by this stage obtained a reputation for skilled mechanical work and metallurgy, these emigrations became a major source of concern for the state. In 1719, the government even banned the emigration of skilled artisans. This is obviously not something to emulate, and it was ineffective in any case, but the government spent vast sums ensuring that those who had already emigrated to France could be persuaded to return, paying for their travel, suspending their punishments under the new law, and even helping them negotiate their debts with their creditors back home. They even rewarded Henry Sully, the French enticer-in-chief, for turning re-enticer for the British.
Even with the UK’s unquestioned place at the forefront of mechanical engineering in the nineteenth century, the government was well aware of the tensions over talent. Indeed, had it acted less, then Isambard Kingdom Brunel might have become a famous Russian engineer, rather than a British one. His father, Marc Isambard Brunel, had fled the French Revolution first to America, and was then persuaded to move to the UK. But by the 1820s, when his son was still a teenager and off studying in France, Marc Brunel was imprisoned for debt. When it was made known that he was in talks with the Russian authorities about emigrating there, the Duke of Wellington and a few influential MPs persuaded the government to pay off his debts and get him released from prison, on the condition that he stay in the country. Had the government not intervened, it seems likely that young Isambard upon graduating would have either remained in France or re-joined his family in Russia rather than returning to England.
So what could the UK today learn from this history? The government of course already attempts to lower barriers to entry, for example with its Innovator, Start Up, Global Talent, and Investor visas. Some of these visas have had their flaws – in the first quarter since the Innovator visa route opened, for example, only two applications were successful, and some of the endorsing bodies have already begun to drop out – but the creation of these new routes shows that the government is serious about making itself attractive to scientists and inventors. There are simply details that need ironing out. Otherwise, the UK has tried to make itself more attractive to foreign innovators, for example by creating regulatory sandboxes in which companies can legally experiment with cutting-edge technologies like drone deliveries. The Enterprise Management Incentive scheme, which allows stock options to be taxed as capital gains, rather than as income, also makes it easier for UK startups to compete for talented managers with the much higher wages on offer in Silicon Valley. (Though in this case, in order to remain competitive, the maximum assets and number of employees that companies should have in order to qualify for the scheme should be raised substantially).
In terms of actual promigration policies, however, which are more proactive in identifying and encouraging people to move, there are far fewer examples today. One of the few might be the Global Entrepreneur Programme, which offers foreign entrepreneurs some assistance in relocating their companies’ headquarters to the UK, along with connecting them with experienced entrepreneurs to act as mentors, and providing introductions to networks of investors. Its success stories include the investment management company Nutmeg, which relocated from Silicon Valley, and the Australian train travel app Seatfrog. But it’s unclear to what extent the programme responds to requests – a more passive role – or actively identifies and persuades particular individuals and teams to move from abroad.
If history is any guide, then more could be done. One lesson is that the people who identify foreign talent and then arrange for them to immigrate should also be rewarded. It is a simple matter of incentives. Another lesson is that governments can attract foreign inventors, scientists and engineers by hiring them directly. This was done in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and was the model pursued by the US and the USSR after the Second World War, when thousands of German engineers were persuaded to move (though in the Soviet case, forcibly). On the American side, among the 1,600 individuals who immigrated were many of the chief architects of its space programme, including Wernher von Braun. When the government itself does the hiring, potential immigrants are less likely to be fazed by the bureaucracy of visa applications. Likewise, the same might be done by private institutions with sufficient gravitas. The sixteenth-century Company of Mines Royal, for example, albeit a private company, had explicit backing from the government. And more recently, the Institute for Advanced Study, based in Princeton, New Jersey, actively recruited researchers who were fleeing European fascism in the 1930s. It became especially attractive to top researchers by not directing their studies, and by giving them no teaching responsibilities. As a result, it can boast having had two thirds of Fields Medallists and 34 Nobel Prize winners.
Whether or not such institutions can be replicated in the UK again, the government will have to step up its efforts if it is to remain competitive. Other countries are catching up on the tax treatment of stock options, while places like Singapore have been using promigration policies for decades. Singapore even came close to poaching companies in one of the UK’s most developed sectors: the Horsham-based company Creative Assembly, famous for making the Total War franchise of video games, actively considered moving in the late 1990s. The UK must look abroad, and to its own past, if it isn’t to lose out on a future Isambard Kingdom Brunel.