UK Immigration News

In a BBC interview today, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has announcedthat migrants from Eastern European countries who will be joiningthe EU on 1 May will only be welcome if they wish to work in the UK.

He has stated that individuals from these eight countries will need to have a job to go to if they want to live in the UK. In order to avoid 'benefit shopping', migrants will only be allowed to stay in Britain if they can support themselves.

Work Permits (UK) has recently announced that Government Ministers havegranted permission to extend the current Sector Based Scheme (SBS) pilotprogramme for another year. The programme is intended to run until at least31 January 2005 due to the success of this programme. During the year the SBSprogramme will be reviewed by Work Permits (UK) in conjunction with otherGovernment Departments to see how this scheme has impacted the UK economyand certain sectors of industry.

As we have reported earlier (see Workpermit.com newsletter Volume 2, Number1 from November 2003), from 13 November 2003 all work permit holders andother individuals who wish to remain in the UK for more than six months mustobtain entry clearance before travelling. A grace period of two months hadbeen allowed so that employers could inform their work permit holders ofthis new regulation.

The UK Home Office has announced that their Highly SkilledMigrant Programme (HSMP) application processing Teamcurrently has a backlog of applications to consider due to asignificant increase in the number of applications received.The Home Office is apparently reviewing the situation and anumber of measures are being implemented in order to returnprocessing times back to normal.

To enable the HSMP Team to efficiently continue to processexisting applications, the Home Office has asked applicantsand their representative to refrain from contacting them withrequests for updates.

Work permit application fees, currently £95 for the 'main scheme' and £74 for the Sector Based Scheme (for unskilled workers in the hotel, catering, and food processing inductries) are set to rise in June 2004 to £155-£180 per application. Association Football clubs face far steeper cost increases to £1000 in appeal cases.

The British Nationality (Fees) Regulations approved by Parliament in December 2003 came into effect on 1 January of this year.

The new table of fees for certain British nationality applications is as follows: