New UK immigration routes

Potential changes to some of the business immigration routes were signaled when the UK Government published its Build Back Better: our plan for growth report in March 2021.

The Statement of Changes to the Immigration Rules published on 15 March 2022 sees those intentions become reality, albeit over several months. 

Introduction of the Global Business Mobility visa

This is the first of the new visa routes and will be open for applications from 11 April 2022.

It will allow foreign migrants to apply under one of five categories, as set out in the table below.

Of those five categories, four of them are reformed and replace existing visa routes, and there is an introduction of a completely new category never seen before.

All these new categories will require foreign migrants to be sponsored by approved organisations, with the appropriate authorisation.

In this respect, employers and organisations already sponsoring migrants under the Intra-Company Transfer, Intra-Company Graduate Trainee, and Temporary Work – International Agreement routes will likely notice little difference.

For example, the Senior or Specialist Worker category will require the sponsored migrant to have been employed by the linked overseas entity for at least 12 months or be a high earner. That is no different to the current Intra-Company Transfer requirements.

However, there are some minor changes. For example, in most cases, the minimum salary threshold will increase slightly from £41,500 under the current category to £42,400 under the new category.

What will be quite interesting to see is which organisations can act as a sponsor under the new UK Expansion Worker and the Secondment Worker categories, and we expect guidance will be released on or around 11 April 2022 when migrants can apply.

However, there will be some noticeable differences between the new UK Expansion Worker category and the current Sole Representative of an Overseas Business (Sole Rep) category as illustrated below:

The Secondment Worker visa category is brand new and does not replace any existing category. It will be suitable for migrants to be seconded to the UK as part of a high value contract or investment by their overseas employers.

There is currently no definition what “high value contract or investment” means, though we expect this to be set out in the relevant guidance (still to be published).

Introduction of the High Potential Individual visa

This new visa route will be open for applications from 30 May 2022. It is similar in terms to the current Graduate visa category which is only open to migrants who are recent graduates from a UK institution.

This new visa category is open only to migrants who have obtained at least a bachelor’s degree or above, from one of the top global universities outside the UK as published in the Global Universities List by the Home Office. The list will be updated annually, and the institutions will need to be listed as a top 50 universities in at least two of the following ranking systems:

• Times Higher Education World University Rankings
• Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings
• The Academic Ranking of World Universities

As with the Graduate visa, migrants will be granted a visa for two years, or three years if they hold the equivalent of a UK Ph.D. There is no sponsorship requirement and applicants have up to five years from the date they obtained their degree to apply for this new High Potential Individual visa.

Introduction of the Scale-up Worker visa

The last of the business-related visa introduced in the Statement of Changes, and the only one which is a route to settlement.

This new visa route will be open for applications from 28 August 2022. Applicants will require a sponsored job offer from an authorised UK scale-up company. A company will qualify for this if:

• it has an annualised growth of at least 20% for the previous 3-year period looking at turnover or staffing
• it has had a minimum of 10 employees at the start of this 3-year period

It is expected that the UK Government will make changes to how other scale-up companies can qualify to act as a sponsor.

New visas means new business options

These are exciting new opportunities for businesses both within and outside the UK, and should hopefully help attract skilled labour to the UK and diversify the staffing population.

If you require any business immigration with the above or existing routes, please do not hesitate to get in touch with a member of the UK immigration team.

By Burness Paull LLP, Scotland, a Transatlantic Law International Affiliated Firm.  

For further information or for any assistance please contact ukscotland@transatlanticlaw.com

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