Are overseas graduates worth the paperwork?

Our engineering firm is used to having to cast the net wide to find the skills we need, so we have always taken a number of our graduate intake from abroad. Some of these are always from outside the EU, and we take on interns every summer, so our HR team is used to dealing with immigration issues.However, with the government’s new points-based system, recruiting from outside the EU now involves a disproportionate amount of time and bureaucracy. With demand for our services taking a dip owing to the recession, I don’t know how much longer we will be able to continue taking on international recruits when the system is working against us. But cutting back feels like a backward step in an international marketplace. I’m also unsure how our internship programme sits with the new system. Should we be setting our sights closerto home?