UK IMMIGRATION NEWS

Tier 1 Visa Changes

Friday, 2 July 2010

The UK government is currently working on setting a quota to cap annual immigration to the UK from April 2011 onwards. The cap would affect those skilled workers coming from outside the European Union. In the interim, a temporary, smaller cap is proposed to come in to effect on July 19, 2010.

However, if an application under Tier 1 (General) is made before 19 July, it will be decided in accordance with the Rules in force on 18 July 2010, regardless of the date a decision is made.

The Government’s 'Programme for Government', announced on 20 May 2010, states:

"We will introduce an annual limit on the number of non-EU economic migrants admitted into the UK to live and work. We will consider jointly the mechanism for implementing the limit."

These changes place an interim limit on the number of applications for the Tier 1 (General) category which may be granted during a specified period of time. The limit will apply only to applications for entry clearance submitted outside the United Kingdom. The limit will not apply to applications for leave to remain under Tier 1 (General) or any application under the Tier 1 (Entrepreneur), Tier 1 (Investor) and Tier 1 (Post Study Work) sub-categories. The number of limit to be applied to the Tier 1 (General) category will be published later.

Where an application meets all the requirements of the Immigration Rules but granting leave would exceed the grant allocation for the relevant grant allocation period, the application will not be refused but no grant of leave will be made. Instead the application will be re-allocated to the next period for consideration.

Tier 1 (General) applicants are currently required to score 95 points for attributes, 75 of which must be for qualifications, previous earnings, UK experience and age. These changes increase the threshold for qualifications, previous earnings, experience and age to 80 points. This change will not apply to those who already have leave as a Tier 1 (General) migrant and are applying to extend that leave or are seeking to switch into Tier 1 (General) from one of the predecessor routes for highly skilled migrants.

The points awarded to those with previous earnings of £150,000, "or with a qualifying MBA qualification" are increased from 75 to 80 in order to maintain the position that meeting this requirement alone is sufficient to meet the overall points threshold.

If you are interested in UK Visas, contact Migration Expert for information and advice on which visa is best suited to you. You can also try our visa eligibility assessment to see if you are eligible to apply for a visa to the UK.