Brexit, woof. Not to call the kettle black—my country elected a racist Halloween-themed Staypuff Marshmallow Man president—but it could be argued that Britain leaving the European Union was a bit, well, let’s say shortsighted. And it’s going to affect how the country gets caffeinated. More than raising the price of a cup of coffee, Brexit is expected to cause a labor shortage in cafes and restaurants, both often staffed by EU nationals.
To combat this, Britain is looking to offer “Barista Visas.” These short-term work permits allow non-Brits to work in the “low-skilled sector,” but as Time reports, the measure is being “roundly criticized for not going far enough.”
The Barista Visa was proposed by Migration Watch UK, a right-wing think tank, whose chairman Andrew Green believes will “kill two birds with one stone” by “meet[ing] the needs of pubs and restaurants and maintain[ing] [Britain’s] links with young Europeans by allowing them to come for a strictly limited period of two years to work.”
Critics of the measure believe it doesn’t properly incentivize EU nationals to move to Britain because there is no hope becoming a permanent resident. As Stephen Bush puts it in the New Statesman:
It’s not a particularly attractive offer, is it? Come to Britain to work in a coffee shop. If you get promoted? You can’t stay. If you fall in love? You can’t stay. If you set up a new business or establish yourself as a writer while working at a coffee shop? You can’t stay.
The Barista Visa is still just a proposal, so who’s to say if Britain will double down on the myopia. All I know is, with this impending barista shortage, if I were a fair citizen of Blighty, I’d open up a home coffee supply shop now.
Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network.
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