The news there is a present and growing IT skills shortage in the UK is nothing new. Nor is the notion that the gap is plugged by skilled immigrant workers. This report from the Centre for Economics and Business Research, for recruiters Harvey Nash, just throws out more alarming statistics.

The UK will need an extra 19,000 skilled migrants by 2012 in IT, telecoms and transport.
A Harvey Nash report also found skilled migrants to the UK will top 800,000 within four years, making a contribution to the UK of £77b.

By 2010, jobs in industries that depend heavily on information and communication technology will account for half the total in Europe. The EU needs 20m skilled workers over the next 20 years.
To meet this demand, European eyes are turned overseas.

The EU last year unveiled a blue card for skilled migrants. It is a direct response to the US's green card. What some call the land of tax breaks and opportunity, the US, gets the lion's share of skilled labour (55%) compared to the EU's puny 5%.

But the blue card's political passage is far from smooth. Aimed at highly skilled migrant workers from Asian and African countries, they would get all the social and financial benefits of their newly-adopted country and their immigration there fast tracked.

But opponents say this has nothing to do with meeting the skills shortage, but is politically motivated to centralise Europe and give Brussels the say on levels of economic migrants.

Whether the blue card succeeds or fails, it's going to take a while to get the political nod. Opponents make another good point: they say skilled migrants are clever enough to know how to negotiate the immigration procedure and business is clever enough to know where to find them and tempt them over.