New UK visa changes... Earn over 35,000£ or get out!

[durhamboy]

Actually I think it was Natalie Bennett (Green Party) who mentioned the scandal of Brits being unable to bring their spouses to settle in the UK because of the financial requirements. As I recall she was the only participant in the debates to mention this (she did it twice in 2 live TV debates) although I don't recall her giving a figure of 19000 Brits. As far as I'm aware none of the participants mentioned it and no one picked up on Natalie's comments.

It was because she was the only one to talk about this I actually voted for her party.

She is an Aussie with a weird agenda. Perhaps you should ask her why it is so hard for Brits to enter the land of her birth.

I would not trust her figures and the electorate agreed. Apart from the wealthy millionaire left wing voters in Brighton no one has elected a Green MP.

The green party got over a million votes i.e. 3.8 of the votes cast. Under a PR system that would translate to 25 seats - instead they get 1 seat....so much for democracy!

You may think she has a weird agenda but a million people voted Green KNOWING that their vote counted for very little under the current system.

I'm not very interested about the rules for Brits to go to Aussie but a couple of things I do know - my son just got a 1 year working visa to go there. Secondly in the old days Brits were given assisted packages to go there. Thousands did and they were called "£10 Poms" because that was all it cost!

Lastly, I think this 19,000 Brits is probably a misunderstanding. I think somehow £19,000 (min. financial requirement rounded to the nearest thousand) was mistaken for the number of people it affected. It is not really possible to know the number of people who can't satisfy the financial requirement!

Edited July 7, 2015 by durhamboy

[7by7]

<snip>

However, this topic is about Tier 2 visas, not family settlement.

So, family members of Brits from Tier 2 countries are welcome to settle free?

Regardless of their religion or colour of skin?

All non EEA nationals who wish to work in the UK need to obtain the appropriate visa under the points based system; Tier 2 being the most common.

Family members of British citizens, and any one else, who wish to settle in the UK need to obtain the appropriate visa or leave to remain. Unless they come under the EEA regulations, they will be charged significant fees; the total cost, including the NHS surcharge, runs to several thousands of pounds.

What their religion or the colour of their skin has to do with anything, only you know!

[7by7]

https://www.gov.uk/tier-2-general/eligibility

According to this, a salary of 20,800 £ pa should do (less for an unregistered nurse)

That is the minimum income required to get a Tier 2 visa in the first place (unless the occupation is one of those listed where a lower salary is acceptable).

If the holder wants to extend it beyond 6 years then they need an income over £35,000 p.a. unless exempt, which nurses currently are not.

Why are limits set higher for immigrants without an official sponsorship?

The simple answer is; ask the government. But which category are you talking about? All Tier 2 applicants need a sponsor.

The answer to that question is simple.

If we want nurses we should train them not import them. The higher limit is to keep key people like doctors.

The tax credit system ,engineered by Blair and Brown,has cost the country a fortune while keeping wages low.

Big companies such as McDonalds or Amazon exploit low paid workers and tax manipulation.

Tier 2 is not a back door for cheap labour.

Nobody has said, at least in this topic, that Tier 2 is a back door to cheap labour; especially as the job must have a salary of at least £20,800 for the applicant to qualify for the visa in the first place!

Don't think that McDonalds pay their burger flippers that much, nor Amazon their warehouse staff!

Yes, you are quite correct to say that if we want nurses we must train them or import them. But it's not that we want more nurses; we desperately need them!

NHS to face chronic nurse shortage by 2016

"Nursing shortage is very real", RCN tells Migration Advisory Committee

Due to the absurd limits the government has placed on the number of training places for prospective British nurses, there are simply not enough nurses qualifying each year in the UK to fill the gaps. So the NHS needs to recruit from abroad.

But, due to the changes introduced in 2011 by the Tory led coalition, those nurses can only work in the UK for 6 years and then have to leave; unless they reach a high enough level to be earning at least £35,000. Not very many will have reached that seniority after just 6 years. (See here for the pay bands, and here for examples of each band.)

Imagine you are, for example, a qualified Philippine nurse. You are offered a job in the UK and told that after 6 years you have to leave; so you have effectively no real career prospects. You are also offered a job in a different country where you can extend your work visa indefinitely, maybe even become a permanent resident and naturalised citizen.

Which would you choose?

I doubt that many would choose the UK.

BTW, yes, doctors are 'key people' but so are nurses! We need to keep them as well!

[Jay Sata]

As I pointed out earlier the shortage of training places for UK young people needs to be addressed and this will not be achieved while employers can access nurses,doctors etc from overseas.

Raising Tier 2 salary levels will stop employers exploiting cheap foreign labour instead of offering more training places.

In the past every UK hospital employed student nurses and they were trained on the job.

David Cameron has a strategy to redress the balance in favour of more training places available in the UK.

today (Wednesday 10 June), the PM confirmed that the Home Secretary has written to the Migration Advisory Committee asking it to advise on reducing work migration from outside the EU, while making sure Britain is open to the best talent that will help our country succeed.

The MAC commission, which will examine how the Tier 2 (Skilled Work) visa system functions, follows the first meeting of the Prime Ministers newly-formed Immigration Taskforce, which has been tasked with reducing net migration and focuses on the domestic measures that the government can take to achieve this.

Prime Minister David Cameron said:

This government is on the side of working people: in the past, it has been too easy for businesses to recruit from overseas, undermining those who want to work hard and do the right thing. As part of our one-nation approach, pushed forward by my Immigration Taskforce, we have asked the Migration Advisory Committee to advise on what more can be done to reduce levels of work migration from outside the EU.

In considering how to significantly reduce non-EEA economic migration, the MAC will advise the government by the end of the year on:

restricting work visas to genuine skills shortages and highly specialist experts

putting a time limit on how long a sector can claim to have a skills shortage

a new skills levy on Tier 2 visas to boost funding to UK apprenticeships

raising salary thresholds to stop businesses using foreign workers to undercut wages

Source https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-announces-migration-advisory-committee

Edited July 7, 2015 by Jay Sata

[micmichd]

<snip>

However, this topic is about Tier 2 visas, not family settlement.

So, family members of Brits from Tier 2 countries are welcome to settle free?

Regardless of their religion or colour of skin?

All non EEA nationals who wish to work in the UK need to obtain the appropriate visa under the points based system; Tier 2 being the most common.

Family members of British citizens, and any one else, who wish to settle in the UK need to obtain the appropriate visa or leave to remain. Unless they come under the EEA regulations, they will be charged significant fees; the total cost, including the NHS surcharge, runs to several thousands of pounds.

What their religion or the colour of their skin has to do with anything, only you know!

Religion and colour of skin should not have to do anything with anything. Unfortunately, I've read too many generalizations about Muslims on TV Forum.

[7by7]

<snip>

However, this topic is about Tier 2 visas, not family settlement.

So, family members of Brits from Tier 2 countries are welcome to settle free?

Regardless of their religion or colour of skin?

All non EEA nationals who wish to work in the UK need to obtain the appropriate visa under the points based system; Tier 2 being the most common.

Family members of British citizens, and any one else, who wish to settle in the UK need to obtain the appropriate visa or leave to remain. Unless they come under the EEA regulations, they will be charged significant fees; the total cost, including the NHS surcharge, runs to several thousands of pounds.

What their religion or the colour of their skin has to do with anything, only you know!

Religion and colour of skin should not have to do anything with anything. Unfortunately, I've read too many generalizations about Muslims on TV Forum.

Indeed, but we try to keep such ignorant prejudice out of this particular forum!

[7by7]

As I pointed out earlier the shortage of training places for UK young people needs to be addressed and this will not be achieved while employers can access nurses,doctors etc from overseas.

You are putting the cart before the horse.

The shortage of qualified British nurses has nothing to do with the recruitment of nurses from overseas; it is down purely to the governments decision to limit the number of training places to a mere 20,000 per year. As you, yourself, agreed earlier, there are 100,000 applicants each year for those 20,000 places!

The NHS needs to recruit foreign nurses to plug the gap.

From "Nursing shortage is very real", RCN tells Migration Advisory Committee linked to earlier

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) today responded to news that the Migration Advisory Committee has opted not to put nursing roles on the shortage list for recruitment overseas.

Responding to the news, Dr Peter Carter, Chief Executive & General Secretary of the RCN, said:

“We are deeply disappointed that the Migration Advisory Committee has significantly misrepresented the position of the RCN in order to claim that there is no shortage of staff in the nursing profession - they should tell that to the people waiting many hours for treatment on trolleys on a Friday night. We will be contacting the Committee about this as a matter of urgency and would urge them to reconsider their position in the light of this misinterpreted evidence.

“Let us be very clear: we provided detailed, extensive and unambiguous evidence of the shortage of nurses in the UK and the effect this was having on patients. We have consistently called for both a long term solution to the lack of staff, and for nursing roles to be on the shortage list. Nurses who are stretched to breaking point will be utterly bemused as to how this conclusion has been reached, which reflects none of the realities of delivering daily care to patients.”

The long term solution the RCN is calling for is obviously training more nurses in the UK; but until and unless that happens, the NHS needs foreign nurses.

The same applies to doctors and other health professionals.

Raising Tier 2 salary levels will stop employers exploiting cheap foreign labour instead of offering more training places.

A minimum salary of £20,800 p.a. may be seen as 'cheap' to some, but many British workers earn considerably less.

Remember, to sponsor a Tier 2 migrant the employer needs to show that they cannot fill the vacancies from within the UK or EEA.

In the past every UK hospital employed student nurses and they were trained on the job.

Indeed, and why that was stopped is a mystery.

I'm sorry, but your quote from Cameron is pure political puff.

Like the MAC's recommendations which led to the absurd and unfair financial requirement for family settlement; it's designed to appeal to the masses whilst doing nothing to address the actual problems.

The masses see large net immigration figures, without realising that this includes EEA migrants. Cameron knows he can't do anything about those, without leaving the EEA (not EU, they are different), so he is again going for the easy target.

Like with family migration, these proposals will have very little effect on the overall immigration figures, but will allow Cameron to say that he is 'doing something!'