Intra company transfers can bypass UK immigration cap

United Kingdom, 6th July: Intra company transfers seem to be providing an easy answer to the recent restrictions imposed by the UK government in putting an annual cap on the UK immigration numbers.

It has been noticed that several foreign companies operating in the UK are actually bringing in large number of workers through the route of intra company transfers. 

Majority of such workers hail from non-EU nations, especially from India. Hence, the new UK immigration cap is proving to be a mere ‘sham’. This is despite the announcement made by UK 

Home Secretary Theresa May last week in which she had reiterated on limiting the number of foreign workers coming into the UK to 24,400 annually. 

The UK Home Office has also admitted to the fact that the annual interim cap will not be applicable to ICTs (intra-company transfers). Foreigners hailing from non-EU nations already on the payroll of the companies in the UK are allowed to come to the UK. 

According to figures available from Home Office, in the year 2008, a total of 4,600 employees of an Indian company TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) were provided sponsorship by the company to work in the UK through ICTs. 

The same year saw a total of 3,235 foreigners coming to the UK after getting sponsorship from Infosys Technologies through ICTs while Wipro sent 2,420 employees to the UK in the same year. 

Although, many claim that the ICT program is being misused by many companies to send their staff to foreign countries since the work done by such foreigners can be easily accomplished by the UK workers. However, a large number of ICT supporters stated that the ICT programme helps in bringing the much desired staff in the UK to do jobs which are not filled by the UK staff.  

The official figures of total arrivals in the UK under the ICT scheme do reveal a decline in the year 2009 as compared to 2008. In 2009, there were 30,000 foreigners coming under the ICT scheme while the number of sponsorships in 2008 was 46,000. 

This is fuelling the suggestion that the number of ICTs is likely to increase once the global economy makes recovery from the economic slowdown in the coming times.