idealpeople blog

We’ve had quite a few enquiries about the difficulties of obtaining UK work permits recently - and we’ve promised to post some information relevant to those who are interested.

Despite the widespread myth that immigration is a “problem” in the UK, and that - for some reason - people come to the UK purely to claim benefits (a claim so ridiculous we can’t help but chuckle), it’s actually very difficult for anyone outside of the EU to come and work in the UK. We deal with a lot of very highly skilled migrants, and as such can offer you a relatively good view of what problems you’re likely to encounter when seeking work in the UK under any kind of permit.

By far and away the best type of work permit you can get for the UK job market *used to be* the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme (HSMP) visa. The HSMP’s major advantage was that it didn’t require any investment or significant effort on the part of any potential future employer. Once you had it in hand (and you could apply before even arriving in the UK), you were free to work for any UK employer, for upto four years - and could extend it beyond that providing you were in continuous employment. After five years of working in the UK, any foreign national can apply for permanent residency.

Unfortunately, from April 2008, the UK government is phasing out the HSMP. This will inevitably cause untold problems to those already working under the HSMP, but that’s a different subject altogether - although check out the Voice of Britain’s Skilled Immigrants website for more information and an interesting update…

The government’s new scheme allows people to work in the UK under what they’ve called the “Tier 1 (General) highly skilled workers”. (Great name, eh?) This, for all intents and purposes, is exactly the same as the old HSMP, just with a different name. To apply for this type of right to work in the UK, you must be able to show how highly skilled you are by achieving 75 points on the UK Immigration Agency’s points scale - with points being awarded for academic qualifications, previous earnings, previous experience and your ability to speak to English “language” (excuse the quote around the term “language”, but this author finds it offensive - a post for another day maybe..). Full details of what points you get for what are available from three different web pages - here, here and here. Why they can’t just put all this on one page is beyond us, but hey. There’s also a complete guide to applying, which you could download from the above website, but finding the link is an absolute nightmare. So you can download it from us instead by clicking here. Please note that we’re just changing our web-hosts so it might take a day or two for this download to be available please bear with us.

So, if you’re not completely lost by now (oh - one thing we forgot - there’s an eligibility calculator you can use just here, then it’s worth having a serious look at this scheme. We’d much rather it was still called the HSMP, but that shouldn’t stop you.

There are other ways of getting to work in the UK. Probably the most obvious is to get a Business and Commercial Work Permit. This allows you to be employed by a UK employer for a specific job. The problem with this is that it requires significant effort and some investment from a future employer - and where things get tricky is that the employer must be able to prove that there are no suitably qualified UK residents who can do the job. We know from bitter experience how hard this is, and as such many employers are reluctant to go down this route. Generally, the best way to go about this is to actually apply for a job that you look especially suited to, and mention that you need a work permit. It’s a long and arduous process though.

There are many other ways of getting into the UK and working here. The International Graduates Scheme (IGS) is one way - although it’s only open to recent graduates and only allows a one-year stay. This is problematic because not many employers will want to employ you just for one year, and getting a longer permit under the new points-based scheme is far from guaranteed at the end of the permit.

There are other options too - although none of them are particularly good avenues for technology professionals.

So there you have it - we’re off for a bit of a lie-down after trying to unravel that. All that’s left to say is good luck, and feel free to get in touch, subscribe to the blog for e-mail updates, or register your details with us here.

Happy hunting….