UK immigration closes door on high skilled immigrants

United Kingdom, 22nd December: The UK government has shut the door on high skilled immigrants under the Tier 1 and Tier 2 from 23rd December 2010.

As per the UKBA(United Kingdom Border Agency), no overseas applications for UK Tier 1(General) visas will be accepted with effect from 23rd December 2010. 

However, applications for Tier 1(General) made within the UK will continue to remain open until April 5, 2011 when the UK Tier 1(General) will become closed forever after being replaced by a permanent UK visa cap.

The latest step, reveals the UKBA, is to make sure that interim UK visa limit for the UK Tier 1(General) visas issued from 19th July 2010 till April 2011 is not overreached.

The total legal limit for skilled economic immigrants allowed into the UK has been reached four months earlier. 

Hence, Damian Green, the UK immigration minister will be closing the applications as the total quota of 5,100 UK visas under the interim limit was filled.

Hence, any applications for UK Tier 1 visas (General) must be submitted along with full fee latest by 22nd December in order to avoid rejections as any UK Tier 1(General) application made after this date will be rejected by the UK immigration department, the UKBA informed.

The decision of permanently ending the UK Work visa (Tier 1 visas) for highly skilled immigrants with a notice of just two days comes as a big shock for many potential UK immigrants. And this is especially worrisome since the changes to the UK immigration in April 2011 will result in closure of this visa category for skilled workers.

The category of UK Tier 1 visas(General) allowed potential immigrants to come to the UK even without having a job with the condition that they proved of possessing high skills in great demand and their ability of becoming high income earners in the UK.

The UK Tier 1 visas had become a subject of strong criticism after it was found that only one out of the four migrants coming to the UK under this UK visa category were in a high skilled job. And almost one out of three migrants were found to be either working as call centre workers/cashiers/security guards or were without any jobs in the UK.