UK Immigration News

Executives from Honda, Toyota, and Nissan have attacked the UK Government's immigration cap on skilled and highly skilled Immigrants. They say that the measure has negative consequences for their industry.

The temporary immigration cap, is due to become a permanent immigration cap in April 2011. Each month, the Government only allows a certain number of skilled immigrants into the UK.

A planned increase to UK immigration fees on 01 November 2010 has been delayed. The reason for the delay is unknown but it is expected that the fees will increase some time soon.

UPDATE: The planned increase in fees has been postponed until further notice.

There will be further fee increase in UK Government visa fees from next week on 1 November 2010. This was announced by Damian Green in September 2010.

Some of the fee increases are detailed below:

The UK Government will not issue any more Tier 1 (General) visas for the month of October 2010 to first time applicants from outside the UK. The limit does not affect applications from dependents, applications from people in the UK switching into Tier 1 (General) from another category, or people extending their current Tier 1 (General) visas.

The temporary immigration cap has already affected applications for the Tier 1 and Tier 2 visa categories. Many employers do not have certificates of sponsorshipavailable to employ more overseas workers under the Tier 2 visa category; Therefore the temporary immigration cap has had a serious affect on the ability of employers to employ people from abroad.Recently under the Tier 1 (General) category it has been announced that all visas have been used up under the October 2010 monthly immigration limit. No Tier 1 (General) visas will be issued until 1 November 2010.

A high court challenge is likely to cause problems for the UK's plans to implement a cap on immigration into the country.

The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants and a number of businesses that depend on skilled immigration to deal with skill shortages have brought a judicial review of the government's temporary cap on immigration. The cap was imposed on 28 June 2010.