Ministers were challenged yesterday over plans by Brussels to implement a US-style green card that would let highly skilled immigrants from outside the EU settle in any European country.
 
Immigration commissioner Franco Frattini described the scheme as a global job advertising blitz to attract engineers, doctors and nurses from Asia, Africa and Latin America.
 
However, charity World Vision has slammed the plans for the Blue Card scheme saying that it will leave poverty stricken regions without access to hospitals and secondary care.
 
Dr Rebecca Cooper today told B&E online that if you tempt engineers and construction workers away from regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa, mortality rates will never be driven down.
 
She said: “Currently 500,000 women die every year through pregnancy complications. If you think about any health system and the needs of any county you think of human resources, ie skilled workers in all different types of areas, infrastructure in terms of transport, and supply chains to get medication out to hospitals. If you don’t provide the infrastructure you are never going to get the mortality rates down.”
 
Britain, Ireland and Denmark may opt out of the EU scheme because they are not bound by EU policy on immigration and asylum.

However, blue cardholders would be allowed to enter the UK through the “back door” because the scheme allows workers and their families to move to a second EU country of their choice after two years.

Cooper added: “If you look at the quality of life in Britain, you can get higher wages over here, you can by and large send your child to school, there’s free health care over here, so it is perfectly understandable.”
 
She also criticised Frattini’s packaging of the scheme as a “global job advertising blitz” saying that it would not truly equate to being global.
 
She said: “It is not actually global. How many builders in England are going to work in Zambia? It is not a two-way thing and that’s not going to happen.”