Annual Limit for Foreign workers in the UK comes in to force

The annual limit for Tier 2 (Non EU Workers)comes into action today 6th April 2011, recently the UK Govt also announced the Tier 4 Student Visa Changes and also recently the UK Govt made an announcement that they intend to make some changes to permanent Settlement applications later in the year.

The Tier 2 Changes have been clearly defined in previous posts of this BLOG.

The Intra-Co Transfer which is outside the annual limit will also be amended in 3 distinguishing ways:

The job needs to be on the graduate occupation list in the UK.

Applicants paid 40,000 GBP or more will be able to stay longer than 1 year and could be granted a further 3 years with the possibility of another extension of 2 years

Applicants paid between 24,000-40,000 GBP will only be permitted to stay in the UK for no longer than 1 year (12 months) at which stage they need to leave the UK and will not be eligible to reapply for 12 months.

2011 Working in the UK

In the past it has not been too difficult for Highly Skilled individuals to immigrate and work in the UK without a job offer or sponsorship from a UK Based Employer HOWEVER the UKBA has recently closed this entry route to applicants from outside the UK.

Through the Tier 2 (General) Visa UK based employer can SPONSOR FOREIGN WORKERS

The process of Sponsorship includes an employer applying for a sponsorship license from the UKBA to be able to employ foreign workers by issuing Certificates of Sponsorship

In order to meet the UKBA requirements under Tier 2 (General) and sponsorship the UK Employer must:

be a legitimate Company operating legally in the United Kingdom
must have Human Resource facilities to deal with immigration control
must have a dully appointed individual that will use the sponsorship management system

This list is not complete and anyone looking to make such an application should contact our offices