Author Archive

The Intra-company Transfer (ICT) route has seemed increasingly redundant since the launch of the Points Based Immigration System last year. The Skilled Worker route became simpler and easier to use, while the abolition of the resident labour market te ...

The number of new visas is starting to make heads spin. The government’s announcement of a route for HGV drivers and poultry workers comes hot on the heels of a new employment route for Graduates which opened in July. Next year will see at least two ...

All being well, the government’s advice to work from home should be lifted from 21 June. With offices filling up, and city streets bustling, normal working life is already starting to resume. But remote working patterns are clearly popular with work ...

With EU free movement fading into memory, the main visa route available for non British and Irish nationals wanting to work in the UK is now the Skilled Worker visa.  The Skilled Worker visa is a sponsorship system: a foreign worker cannot simply app ...

The end of free movement has, for better or worse, given rise to a number of new visa routes catering for workers looking to establish themselves in the UK. Joining their ranks is the frontier worker permit which opened to new applicants on 10 Decembe ...

For work-based immigration, last week’s statement of changes to the Immigration Rules was in many ways rather anticlimactic. The last two years have seen a series of reports and policy statements setting out the government’s plans for a ‘new’ ...

There is something reassuringly self-explanatory about the representative of an overseas business visa. Compared to the crop of new visas that have emerged over the last year, with their irritatingly zeitgeisty names such as “innovator” and “glo ...

With the UK still reeling from COVID-19, a mega recession looms. The statistics are sobering; 8 million workers on the government furlough scheme, 2.6 million claims for Universal Credit since the lockdown began and the economy already suffering its b ...

Under the new immigration system planned to kick in from January 2021, the minimum skill level needed to be sponsored for a general work visa will be reduced from RQF level 6 to RQF level 3. This means that jobs which are considered to be A-level stan ...

Reaction to the Migration Advisory Committee’s latest report, released on 28 January, has largely focused on the MAC’s lukewarm response to the government’s desire for an Australia-style points based immigration system. Very little a ...

If the polls are to be believed, the manifesto that the Conservatives launched yesterday will be the legislative agenda for the UK’s next government. Whichever way you intend to vote in the upcoming election, it needs careful scrutinising to see wha ...

All eyes were on Birmingham yesterday for the launch of the Labour Party’s manifesto. Billed as “radical” by Jeremy Corbyn, its stated purpose is to offer “real change” and to build a fairer Britain. But this sense of radical ...

You wait ages for a new visa route and three come along at the same time… Hot on the heels of the announcements earlier this summer of new visas for graduates and for scientists comes today’s news that the Conservatives are planning to introdu ...

For politicians with an agenda to push and votes to win, talking up an “Australian-style points based system” seems like a catchy, quick-fix solution to public anxiety over immigration. During the referendum campaign it was a popular trope of the ...

With the Brexit psychodrama continuing to monopolise airtime and public attention, it would be easy to overlook the government’s recent announcement of a new visa route for foreign students in the UK. Providing a bit of relief from the general d ...

When the word ‘chaotic’ no longer seems to adequately describe a situation you know things are getting bad.  The government’s announcement and subsequent hasty retraction of its intention to end free movement on 1 November 2019 has served o ...

From 29 March 2019 the government’s new ‘start-up’ visa finally opened for new applicants. Announced last June, the visa is intended as a replacement to the Tier 1 (Graduate Entrepreneur) route but carries with it the expectation that it will, a ...

Brexit notwithstanding, 2018 is likely to be remembered as the year the lid was blown on the government’s hostile environment policy. The debate about how difficult we want the lives of migrants unlawfully in the UK to be has now caught the atte ...

To go along with the private jet and luxury yacht, the current ‘must-have’ for a discerning multi-millionaire seems to be a range of international passports. The phenomenon of citizenship by investment has emerged over the last few decades and de ...

After months of uncertainty we finally have a picture emerging of what the post-Brexit immigration system will look like. We have known for some time that after we leave the EU on 29 March 2019, the plan is to enter a transition period until 31 Decemb ...

Less than two months into the job, Sajid Javid appears to be, so far, quite a pragmatic Home Secretary. Following six months of the Tier 2 cap wreaking havoc amongst employers and users of the Points Based System, resulting in the NHS losing out on hi ...

What started as a minor aberration has now turned into a worrying trend. The Home Office confirmed on 24 May that we have hit the monthly cap on visas for skilled non-EU workers for the sixth month in a row. On top of that, Freedom of Information d ...

Today is the deadline for employers with 250 or more employees to publish calculations showing the size of the pay gap between their male and female workers. The gender pay gap is the percentage difference between the average hourly earnings for men a ...

Seasoned Brexit watchers will be familiar by now with the trope that there is a “need for a level playing field”. Coined by the EU out of concern that the UK may turn itself into a tax haven, the phrase has now been appropriated by Brexiteers in t ...

Hidden within December’s statement of changes (HC309) to the Immigration Rules are new provisions that will affect how the Home Office assesses continuous residence for indefinite leave to remain (ILR) applications. Certain visa categories require a ...

The current Prime Minister coined the term “hostile environment” when she was in charge at the Home Office. It is easy to forget that these measures, aimed at making life intolerable for immigrants without status, began during the last Lab ...