I wonder how the announcement of the relaxation on the skilled worker visa cap was greeted in those households where young people with very impressive A level results, nevertheless had their ambitions to be doctors dashed when they were unable to get a place in medical school.
For years and years we have been turning qualified and enthusiastic young people from medicine and nursing degrees.
The doctors from overseas are drawn disproportionately from developing countries where the number of clinicians per head of population is much lower, and their services are correspondingly in greater demand.
People sometimes complain to me that doctors trained here, who subsequently emigrate, ought to repay some of the costs of their training. My word, that would take some nerve as we denude poor countries of their trained doctors!
(We do, of course, need to ask ourselves why so many of our own doctors leave the NHS within just a few years of having completed their training, and address the issues that cause them to do so).
We have belatedly started to address our shortage of training places with the reforms to nurse training about which I wrote in this column on 12th May, and with the announcement earlier this year that 5 new medical schools are to be opened, increasing the number of places by 25%.
The recourse to doctors from abroad however, is a return to a bad old habit.
Exactly the same is true of the needs for skilled personnel in every other enterprise. For years we neglected the shortcomings in our education system whist employers relied on inviting both skilled and unskilled workers from overseas.
It is a nonsense to imagine that we can just continue to import the next generation of skilled workers.