Immigration changes 20th June 2022

Immigration changes

The immigration policies will continue to change throughout the year, as the UK Government is now considering changing part of the Human Rights Act as well as other immigration policies.

Nationality and Borders Act 2022 was announced to bring into a number of key changes and I am sure we will be speaking about this in the coming months.

Here is the key summaries to changes which will apply from tomorrow onwards:

• High Potential Individual (HPI) route is a key driver to the UK Governments policies to attract the best talent and increase on entrepreneurship. The visa is granted for 2 years and you must have been granted a qualification in the last 5 years from a listed number of universities in the world. Most of the universities targeted are from the US. We know that economies thrive in entrepreneurship, so it’s not surprising about the list. For example, MIT graduates are renowned for their tech start-ups. Its an exciting visa category and is giving people from the best of universities to come and work/start-up in the UK.
• In terms of the Scale-up route visa, is a contrast to the HPI visa because it is to allow those with offer of skilled work to come and work for a authorised UK scale-up company. The growth of the business must demonstrate 20% for their previous 3 years in terms of turnover or staffing. The business must be able to show they already employ 10 people and would need to evident that in their application. Salary must be above £33,000 with the employment must be skilled to graduate level (RQF 6 and equivalent). Visa is going to be granted for 2 years and further extension permitted for 3 years. The visa will lead to settlement after 5 years, meeting the prescribed requirements and also the ILR requirements at the date of application.

Global Business Mobility Visas

The arrival of the Global Business Mobility route, brings new changes to the way in which new businesses and subsidiary are set up in the UK. The UK Expansion Worker Visa is the replacement of the overseas business visa and looking to set up a branch in the UK.

There are now 5 visa categories which are summarised as follows:

1. Senior or Specialist Worker is a route for overseas workers to complete temporary work assignments in the UK and must be linked to the employer business overseas.
2. Graduate Trainee is a similar visa category under the Tier 2 ICT, whereby a person can come into the UK and complete graduate training course and is required to undertake work placement.
3. UK Expansion Visa as discussed above.
4. Service Supplier is a new visa option. This can be a private or independent business, fulfilling their assignment for one of the UK’s international trade agreements.
5. The final visa route is the Secondment Worker, employed overseas and completing a high value contract or investment.