Landmark Judgement for Highly Skilled Indian Migrant Workers in the UK
08th April 2008
The High Court has ruled that the UK government’s new, tougher rules on immigration for skilled workers are unfair. The hearing ruled that it was “not open to the government to alter the terms and conditions” of their Highly Skilled Migrants Programme (HSMP), which has so far allowed thousands of highly skilled workers to seek employment in the UK.
The ruling came after the Highly Skilled Migrants Programme Forum filed a revision petition in reaction to retrospective changes that were effected to the programme in November 2006. The Forum was acting on behalf of 49,000 highly skilled workers - which included a number of doctors, engineers and technocrats from India - who were attracted to the UK by the HSMP programme. The programme was introduced in January 2002 in order to lure “high human capital individuals” to come and work with UK businesses.
The points of the programme that the government revised in 2006 were those that dealt with educational qualifications, age, current salary, UK experience, and UK Study. These changes meant that all current HSMP visa holders had to reappear in front of immigration officials for examination under the new scheme, which required them to demonstrate a higher annual income in order to get their visa extended.
The Home Office said that these changes were made to the programme due to analysis, which showed that the previous test was “not sufficiently rigorous to select those migrants who were making the greatest economic contribution to the UK.” However, the Forum claimed that these changes could be disastrous to the workers currently boasting visas under the programme. They believe that as many as 90% of the 49,000 migrants who have come to work in the UK under the scheme could be forced to leave the country, as they would fail to be accepted under the revised programme.
Luckily for the affected migrants on the scheme, the judge at the High Court agreed with the Forum. They said that a number of migrants had made official statements about the hardships they would face due to the revisions and claimed that the changes to the terms and conditions were “unfair” to the immigrants who had already been granted admittance to the UK under the old terms and conditions of the programme.
Source:
Press Association
Yahoo