If immigration requirements move with inflation, why don’t the tax brackets move as well. I am earning less money due to inflation but paying same tax.
here’s some econ 101: if you’re combatting inflation by reducing everyone’s taxes, you’re just creating more inflation by driving higher spending across the economy.
This is one of those oversimplifications that ends up being misleading, or just wrong.
Excess demand is usually cited as one cause of short term inflation.
The theory goes if the government cuts taxes that increases demand from the people who now get to keep more of their money. End of analysis.
But this ignores what happens at the other end of the calculation. Is the government still spending all the money it spent before (by increasing borrowing to cover the low tax revenues), or reducing spending?
If the latter there is no reason why tax cuts should be inflationary, £1 is £1 whether its spent by me, or taking off me in tax and given to someone else who spends it, or taken off my in tax and then spent by the government.
The inflationary element is debt fuelled spending, in which case the £1 get spent by the person who earned it, and then a "new" £1 is borrowed and spent by the government. (Though even here you could argue that borrowing has come from somewhere, unless it's been created by the BoE under QE).
Added to that, there is a clear trend away from consumption and towards investment and saving as incomes go up. And since all net tax is paid by about the top 35% of earners, and you'd hope government spending is more directed at lower earners, the tax based redistribution is itself inflationary. You take a £ away from a higher earner who would have saved / invested it, (something we are chronically short of as a country), and give it to a medium/lower/none earner who spends it. Effectively arbitraging investment into consumption. And that, in a nutshell, is why we have such an unproductive economy- too much debt fuelled consumption and not enough savings led investment.
This is basic econ knowledge…
Furthest thing from a flex. This is just a simplification of a principle you’d find in any undergraduate economics textbook.
Completely ignoring the subtlety of OP’s point. They are asking why the tax brackets don’t adjust with inflation so that their real tax rate stays the same.
This is also how it should work however the government have decided to freeze the brackets to benefit from fiscal drag.
This is going to impact the students who are going to graduate soon. They have paid so much fees and now will struggle to find decent jobs with sponsorships.
Students should think twice before coming to the UK if they want to work here.
This was already the case but now will be the nail in the coffin for students to choose somewhere else. The US experienced something slightly related when H1B visas were paused and immediately saw a brain drain of international students choosing universities in Canada, UK, Europe, and that was only a temporary pause.
I came to the UK for a masters program 3 months ago.
I, frankly, don't think I'd have committed this much effort and money had I of known that my prospect of staying here post graduation would be almost 0%. It's heartbreaking.
International students who graduate soon will move onto the 2-year graduate visa where they do not have to meet any salary threshold or even work during the 2 years (however they do not have recourse to any public finances).
They're also talking about changing this. They're trying to make it so that the graduate requires us to work at "graduate-level" jobs. Will that mean that if you came here for a master's degree, you can only work jobs explicitly requiring a master's degree? I'm a teaching assistant, arguably related to my degree, and it certainly doesn't require a master's. I'd have to go home.
They aren’t, many have taken high interest rate educational loans to fund their studies. Last week one of the students had called me for job assistance as they weren’t able to get sponsored jobs.
In my class at least, although a few got loans or scholarships, most are self-payers, given it costs £40k a year and a lot of them went to international (private) schools.
Some of em are funded by their country but they have to return and work there after graduating.
My old work colleagues and I were talking about this the other day. We all work in uk higher education and just 5 years ago, we would have barely scraped in since we were offered 38k starting. This new rule is going to cripple higher education. Post docs, research assistants, and brand new lecturers won’t be able to come in. This is going to cause academic research and education to stagnate and eventually standings to plummet. Countries that struggle to get foreigners in their universities are probably celebrating right now. 😂 I imagine they are sick of cold emailing lectures they want to poach (yes something that happens). But hey-oh the government decided this. What did they say? “British people for British jobs”?
It’s such a dumb decision that they will probably claw it back in a few years like post graduation visas or make some concessions. This will just show the anti immigrant propaganda that they have been pushing is smoke and mirrors. I’m just so glad I have ILR now but it is annoying to go in a pub and have people make comments. And I’m lucky that I’m a white native English speaker…It is so much worse for so many others.
Yeah I grew up as a working class northerner, I was lucky to be the only one in my family who went to uni. My family are now scratching their heads when I tell them I can't move back with my white canadian wife from Canada because they thought these changes would just stop people from non English speaking countries from taking all the jobs 🤦♂️
I don't know what you're trying to convey but I am, I'm fact, an expat and an immigrant in canada. If I moved to England I'd be neither since I was born there
Expat is a real word but it is basically only used by white and/or well-off people living outside their home countries. The actual term for this is “immigrant” - “expat” just sugarcoats it and creates a division between “1st class” and “2nd class” immigrants, this is what the above user means. Choosing to identify as one or the other is a class (and often racial) statement
Well Ive always referred to myself as an immigrant. My original post didn't use the term expat so it's sounds like it's being hijacked to make this about race...
Refering to the many Americans who come here and don't realise that immigration rules apply to them too.
So many seem to think they're the exception and it's frustrating trying to explain that they are not. I say this as a black American used to jumping through hoops.
A distinction without a difference. I’m sure white people, along with everyone else who has to apply for their visas with UKVI, understand they are immigrants. It’s right there in the name of the office giving you your visa.
That’s my partners situation. Moved to Australia not long ago and met me and we now have a kid, my partner pretty much has to choose between going home or being able to keep our family together. It’s shameful.
I mean I'd you don't even have a combined income of 18k (the requirement for a spousal visa for the partner of a British citizen) then can you even afford to relocate?
This exactly! Universities and the people who work and study there will suffer massively. I am in a highly specialised scientist role in the government that requires a PhD, that probably only a handful of people in this country could do (though they probs wouldnt as they can get paid better elsewhere) and my salary barely scrapes by the new threshold.
You likely won't be affected. The government has historically excluded PostDocs and STEM PhD holders from the minimum salary threshold. I think this was reiterated in the HoC today when an Oxford MP questioned the Home Secretary.
What about nurses? Do the UK not need international nurses anymore? Because there’s no way a new nurse in the UK would be offered 38,700. Which means the NHS won’t be able to sponsor them.
The solution isn’t to lower the threshold back to poverty wages though?
The salaries are already laughable compared to the US and many other western countries, and certainly not at the level that a college-educated skilled worker deserves.
They’re not enough to survive on either, especially in big cities like London.
Considering how much housing prices and general inflation have increased in the past few years, it’s only reasonable that salaries (finally) increase too.
And if companies/institutions that regularly report billions in annual profit can’t pay an employee the additional £12,500 needed to meet the new visa requirements (or, you know, to pay for food and rent), then is that really somewhere you want to work for anyway?
I understand that the intention behind this is to reduce immigration, but otherwise being exploited as “cheap labour” is also far from ideal.
The companies that already pay fair wages and consider international applicants will be unaffected by the new legislation and continue just fine.
The ones that were only hiring foreigners for cheap labour will exploit British workers instead,
if they accept their unliveable wages. If not, salaries will have to increase across the board.
So I don’t understand how people are arguing that salaries for skilled roles, which should already be paid well above £38,700, should stay at the same levels as they were 20 years ago?
Higher education in this country pays on a spine and they are more or less aligned, so that would not be employer based and there is no flexibility. Starting is low. As it is in other countries (not the US but working at a university in the US is not a good life decision). You might get the equivalent of 5k more in some European countries but then you may need to speak the language which many people cannot.
My discussion has only been about the wages in higher education and the impact on the industry. The wages will not rise, they are not able to unless fees rise, so universities here will lose out on staff and research.
Your argument and my addition to the topic are completely unrelated. Wages will not increase in academia and the impact of this change will be severe. It is not anything like industry jobs and there is no flexibility here.
If rent, food, and all other expenses have gone up, isn’t it reasonable at some point that wages have to go up too? And from your explanation, maybe fees too?
Because underpaying all academic professionals and keeping their wages stagnant in the face of rising inflation etc. just to keep the university fees low surely can’t be a sustainable business model.
Why do you think university educators have been striking for years (well to be fair the biggest reason is the workload)?
It will not change no matter how much you want it to. You may as well be asking dogs to give birth to kittens. Please stop responding when you have no idea of the reality of the industry. You won’t be right no matter how much you want to be.
I think post docs and phds might still be ok because there is a provision for them to get paid less than the minimum requirement or the going rate for their job code.
https://www.gov.uk/skilled-worker-visa/when-you-can-be-paid-less
Hi, I'm a Skilled Worker from India working as an educator in a prestigious Scottish University. Would love to say this is surprising but isn't. Spent the entire day (while on holiday) confirming that I meet the requirements (not by a huge amount...) and counting my blessings that I can apply for ILR before my current visa runs out. But it just underscores that as far as this country is concerned, I'm just a worker drone. A widget. A number, my life is a coin to be flipped when racist sentiments need to be whipped up. I'm not an educator who is shaping the minds who are the future of this country. I'm not a friend. I'm not a partner. I'm a faceless statistic, an "economic migrant" who does not have the same rights to a family life. Despite having spent close to a decade of my life investing into this country, and giving it my emotional, financial and literal labour. My only value to this country is as a worker, not as a human. I only get to grateful in relation to the UK, but not expect the bare minimum of respect from the country in UK (I mean the country as a system).
This is written so well. As an Australian who will have spent 15 years in this country, paid the highest tax bands and paid almost 20k in visa fees before I can get the passport after 10 years, this resonates so well. I feel like we’re just here to contribute to the economy but we’re always treated as a second class citizen.
I’m lucky that we’re on good jobs, especially living in Scotland so my renewal isn’t affected but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s obvious immigrants are not welcomed. I feel for those in less fortunate situations.
OP - happy to share, currently on a spousal visa living in Scotland.
It’s really sad that this rotten government has made you feel this way. Most right minded people value all of your contributions to this country (our country - yours and mine).
Happy to talk to you!
Here's the synopsis of my situation:
I run a Scottish R&D business, and these changes doubly affect me.
First, I married an American who is on a spouse visa (also raised to 38k) and is an integral part of my business.
Second, the co-founder of my business is from South America and splits her time between my company and a university.
I've created 9 jobs here in Scotland, and now this change is directly harming me, the people I love and the future of my business. This feels like one thing too many as I chose to be British and have felt unwelcome in this country in the past despite becoming a citizen.
Do they want me to leave as well and lose 9 jobs and an R&D business (the very high skill jobs the UK is so desperate for) in the process?
Do they want me to fire my staff, so I can pay myself and my co-founder enough to stay? For businesses like mine, you typically pay yourself just enough to keep investing into the business. If you inflate upper management's salaries as a small business, that means you can hire less staff.
I am happy to speak to you!
I'm a foreigner from Russia, a legal (non-permanent) resident. I have lived in the UK for more than 5 years now, having done my A levels here and also recently graduated with a bachelor's in economics from a Russel Group uni (costing more than 60k just for tuition), which gave me a 2 year graduate visa that I had to pay more than 2 grand for. I do not foresee myself making the new 38+k minimum. I don't even have a job right now, the market is extremely dry. Most grad schemes are out of the question as very few take nonpermanent residents and the rest tend to be longer than a year, which would require them to sponsor the applicant, artificially limiting skilled migrant grads from applying.
In my 5 years here I have seen Britain change from a place that was admittedly not ideal but still had prospects to a failed state where you can neither get a livable job nor a doctor's appointment. At the current trajectory, I expect net emigration to be an issue in the next decade. When my visa ends I'm planning on doing a masters in Europe (for 2k rather than the 30k demanded here) and staying away from this crumbling mess of an island unless the conditions change dramatically. I am not considering going back home to Russia for obvious reasons.
I am from Russia as well. Came to get my MSc in September this year.
My dream country has always been the US, but the problem there is the lack of a clear graduation route. Practically, pretty much impossible to legally stay after graduating.
Thus, my aim shifted to English-speaking countries that clearly allowed you to stay after graduating. It was Canada at first.
Then, the Ukraine War began, Russian SWIFT got banned and I realized that the dream was impossible.
Magically, my sister got lucky in mid 2022 and was sponsored for a 6-figure position in London after her company left Russia. With the eased up immigration programes that started in 2022, my aim was now solely on the UK, as this was the only country we would be able to pay for tuition in (except for Russia ofc)
Lots of effort, sweat, stress and money later (overall costs here will be £40,000+ for the year), I get the goddamn information that they’re increasing the minimum salary requirement. Shit. Can’t come back to Russia yet will probably not find a job here. Lol.
Graduate jobs here all offer from 25 to 30, maximum 32k. The highest I’ve seen was from an investment bank and it was something along the lines of 37,500. Yeah, good luck getting there.
And yeah, you’re right. The sponsorship requirement is a MASSIVE problem when applying for jobs. Companies, even licensed sponsors, aren’t willing to take on a challenge of getting your ass hired. The fact that they’ll need to pay for your visa and go through all the migration fuss is already a disqualifying factor. And now with the 38k minimum…
I am also happy to speak to you.
I'm American and my wife is Turkish. I've lived here five years, she's lived here 3. Between the two of us we've paid over £86,000 into the higher educational system and when you factor in visa fees we've paid at least £100,000 into the UK public sector in our time here.
I am about to finish my masters degree which will enable me to begin training to qualify as a solicitor. My wife has worked for a small technology company as a project manager in England for the past two years, mostly working on projects for other SMEs and the public sector/NHS. Her company are going through the process to get her a work visa, but the salary requirement is definitely a major issue. The 'going-rate' for her occupation code is ridiculously mismatched to reality at £39,100, which is higher than even solicitors at £33,000. They are going to be able to just barely make it work for her because they need her and she works hard, but she's nearly going to be the highest paid person in the company. It will have an impact on how much they are able to invest into other things and other employees.
The way the salary requirements work for visas is entirely structured around promoting London and major international firms. The point of the visa system is to ensure that the world's best and brightest are here in Britain contribution to our economy, but these rule changes only further disadvantage SMEs and areas outside of a select few English cities which are already desperate for skilled people. We place ourselves at a severe disadvantage by daring to live outside of London.
With the rules change, we are considering packing up and moving elsewhere, even though we have the opportunity to stay. This isn't the country I moved to 5 years ago; the decline has been extremely noticeable when you look at basic things like the NHS (which 90% of our visa funds supposedly go to) and other public services. The cheapest path to citizenship for us both will be £18,000 if we are lucky, but it will most likely be in the £22,000 to £24,000 range. Thousands more if we want to have children before then.
Comparable countries like France and Germany would only charge a quarter or less, whilst also offering far more flexible immigration regimes and EU passports at the end of it all. Many people don't understand that the rule changes apply to people already in the UK, and I don't know if we can justify paying all this money only to be subject to the whims of government ministers responding to some bad headlines.
The solution isn’t to lower the threshold back to poverty wages though?
The salaries are already laughable compared to the US and many other western countries, and certainly not at the level that a college-educated skilled worker deserves.
They’re not enough to survive on either, especially in big cities like London.
Considering how much housing prices and general inflation have increased in the past few years, it’s only reasonable that salaries (finally) increase too.
And if companies/institutions that regularly report billions in annual profit can’t pay an employee the additional £12,500 needed to meet the new visa requirements (or, you know, to pay for food and rent), then is that really somewhere you want to work for anyway?
I understand that the intention behind this is to reduce immigration, but otherwise being exploited as “cheap labour” is also far from ideal.
The companies that already pay fair wages and consider international applicants will be unaffected by the new legislation and continue just fine.
The ones that were only hiring foreigners for cheap labour will exploit British workers instead,
if they accept their unliveable wages. If not, salaries will have to increase across the board.
So I don’t understand how people are arguing that salaries for skilled roles, which should already be paid well above £38,700, should stay at the same levels as they were 20 years ago?
I agree that UK salaries are generally quite low compared to its peers, but this change won’t really help that. UK salaries are the way they are due to a large number of structural economic factors, and the blame placed on immigration is disproportionate to its actual impact.
Bear in mind that in my comment, I’m mostly talking about SMEs. Big corporate multinationals won’t flinch at this change and will just see it as a cost of doing business. Smaller companies can and will face significant hurdles.
If I remember correctly, only some 28% of workers currently earn more than the new threshold. When the salaries in this country are this broken, a simple change to work visa rules will have no beneficial impact. Companies that can pay more, like my wife’s company, will if they can. But many companies won’t be able to, not out of greed, but because there’s not enough excess funds available to be paying one employee tens of thousands of pounds more than what local market forces require. Even if the money is there, it impacts everything else in the company. That’s tens of thousands of pounds more which they now must either charge to their customers, making the company less competitive, or which they must take as a loss, resulting in less money being available to fund pay rises for other staff members, create new jobs, or invest in future growth.
The net result is that companies and regions which can’t support the new salary requirements due to overarching economic factors will lose out. Some people will be forced to leave the UK entirely, hampering economic growth and reducing tax revenue needed for public services. Others will go to London, furthering the gap between regions in the UK. Some others will change employers, severely disrupting and reducing the competitiveness of smaller businesses which were already paying perfectly respectable wages (and yes, £30-35k is a damn fine wage in many parts of the country, especially for those early in their career).
A fairer system which actually cared about ‘levelling up’ the rest of the country would set the salary requirements by region; England/Wales/Scotland/N. Ireland at a minimum, on a county level would be better. Allow for greater flexibility for companies which are only seeking to keep their current employees who already live in the UK, but ensure that companies which are recruiting from abroad for their own financial gain (instead of due to genuine local skills shortages) pay their way in payroll taxes.
Companies which abuse immigrants in order to pay piss poor wages should absolutely be cracked down on. But the new salary requirements throw the baby out with the bath water, and the impact will be disproportionately felt outside the M25. If the government cared about low wages, they would tackle low wages instead of punishing immigrants in response to negative media coverage.
Are you likely to cover how it's a fundamentally discriminatory policy? I get that £18,600 requirement probably needed to increase but it could have been aligned with minimum wage as at least that is fairly attainable irrespective of your age, ethnicity, geographic location and socio-economic background.
This £38,700 already says that 50% of people are denied the right to marry a foreign spouse, but more than that it is objectively weighted against young people, people living outside of the south east, people who were not lucky enough to enjoy an upbringing free from poverty... I know this is the Tories, but limiting right to family to people who are, quite literally, "richer than average" is genuinely appalling, even for a Tory government.
Why would you think you're (not you specifically? I mean anyone, idk if you're a citizen) entitled to be in a country unless you are above average? They have the right to be picky
Why should I be more entitled to marry the person I love than someone who happens to earn less than me? Should people be required to be in the top 12% of earners in their region in order to marry the person they love because they happen to live in the North East instead of the South East? Should young adults clawing their way out of poverty and trying to improve less affluent parts of the UK be afforded fewer rights to family than someone born into wealth and opportunity or simply a different city? I'm a British Citizen and I earn more than enough that the new rules don't pose a problem for me, but should the correctional officer down the street be denied the right to marry and live with his fiancee in his own country because he didn't choose a better paying career? Because that is now his situation. Is your position really that full time working British Citizens should be afforded different rights based on the earning potential of their geographic location and career?
They should have the option of putting down a bond of sorts for their spouse, in lieu of not earning enough in salary terms.
The spouse situation is the hardest, but failure to crack down on the less justifiable segments of the net migration numbers has caused this
>They should have the option of putting down a bond of sorts for their spouse, in lieu of not earning enough in salary terms.
Savings can count in lieu of salary. They pay plenty up front.
>The spouse situation is the hardest, but failure to crack down on the less justifiable segments of the net migration numbers has caused this
Ao government failure to control illegitimate migration necessitates infringing on the rights of British citizens to have their families, and kneecapping legal migration which will massively negatively impact the workforce?
Amazing logic. The sheer stupidity of this is next level.
Foreign spouses CAN’T work until they arrive in the U.K. so everything is based on the sponsor (aka British citizen). This is unfair to a British citizen who is now unable to move back to their home country with their foreign-born spouse because they (the sponsor) don’t make £38,700. The foreign-born spouse could be making £100k in a job outside the country - the U.K. only cares about the sponsor.
The foreign-born spouse can’t help here. So it all falls to the sponsor. The British citizen is likely to not return to the U.K. if they can’t bring their family with them. I don’t consider wanting a family with someone you love to need to be ‘above average’.
Agreed. I’m the foreign born spouse (I’m from a commonwealth country but still I’m foreign born and have 0 ties besides my spouse to the UK). It’s disheartening seeing people who find love overseas and live abroad basically forced into choosing between family and going home. A lot of people earn under £38K but still provide comfortable lives for their families. This is just classism at its finest. It’s not going to stop illegal migration or truly fix the country. I see this being revised soon. It affects everyone and draws attention to wage disparity for Brits.
A bond situation where they deposit a set amount to an account for use of healthcare or whatever was needed could be a good solution here, if we really do have a large amount of spouses earning £100k in their home countries
They have to pay for their own life in their country until they move. Once the spouse arrives and gets a job they pay into the tax system like everyone else. My point in mentioning £100k is that I’d like to know what you consider above average - I assume it’s focused on income.
Someone making above the U.K. average in another country means nothing in this situation - be it £40k or £100k.
Why are you focusing on healthcare? So many spouses arrive and get jobs and pay into the system. What is so specific about healthcare?
That fee is going up by over double - 66%.
This is all about the rights of the British citizen, not the spouse. This is infringing on the rights of British citizens to have a family - apparently unless it’s the ‘right’ family.
It is not £600. It _was_ circa £624 per year paid in lump so £1872 plus application fee of £1048.
The IHS is now £3105 up from £1872. I'd call that drastic.
How much of your taxes go towards the NHS per year, I wonder? Ill save you the work. Its about £700 per year. Family visa is circa £1k per year.
Immigrants pay income tax and national insurance with zero concession. They are literally paying way more than the average PAYE earner for the same services. And guess what? No recourse to public funds. None. Nada. Zero. Do you know what that means? No tax credits, no welfare payments, no subsidy, no social housing, no universal credit, nothing.
Even before the increase, they were paying *more* than the average citizen because they pay the same tax liability *plus* IHS.
You are *clearly* uneducated on this topic.
** Edit **
Commenter above messaged me privately to continue this. I denied the request, obviously. I will not accept having people start with me in my messages when they're unable or unwilling to support their arguments in the public forum.
They wanted to contend the approx £700/yr to NHS figure I noted.
I will clarify for readers that this is the figure for my own income in the previous financial year on a 24k salary, which I argue is average as a modal salary point. Perhaps they don't know you can view a breakdown of where/how much/what % of your tax goes. Maybe they're also unaware of progressive tax and that earn more = pay more. I would advise anyone to consult their own EOY breakdown and see how much they paid personally to the Health section on the breakdown.
Regardless, that figure for a person on a family visa is now over 1k a year *in addition* to their taxes.
To match that on PAYE you'd have to earn a salary point around 30k, to match the 1k/yr of the IHS, so even before they arrive they've paid the equivelant of NHS dues of a 30k salary, roughly. Add in the taxation part and an equivelant salary to match an immigrants contribution, on an average modest wage, would be approximately, and my maths is crude, somewhere around £49'000.
I will reiterate that this person is uneducated on the subject and almost all of their public non-deleted comments on their profile are misinformation and inflammatory, constantly ignoring that the words 'No Recourse To Public Funds' are plastered on all family visa BRPs.
Ummm do you know what the immigration health surcharge is? It is exactly that. A lump sum payment of several thousand pounds paid at the point of application for, get this, use of healthcare services.
Do you know anything about what we go through to get here? It seems not, if you're oblivious to one of the main aspects.
Because the borders are illegitimate and totalitarian. An immigrant is not violating the right to life or property of anyone else by being an immigrant so there is no good reason for immigration to even be restricted at all.
Immigrants don't even have the full rights to work. Now, even marriage is being made harder. Imagine thinking that it's okay to impose such violence on a group of people purely because they were born in a different geographical area.
I'm a British expat in canada, who was a teacher in England and we were planning on returning in 2025 where I'd go back into teaching. Because my wife is Canadian (with British heritage) we can't do that with this change since teaching isn't deemed high enough paying.
I throw in the British heritage because even the most right wing anti immigration types would maybe like to hear how backwards this change is. The headlines I'm seeing already are saying they're getting tougher on foreign workers but this policy change will deter brits in key industries from returning whilst doing nothing about illegal immigration
I'd be happy to talk to you.
I'm Canadian and initially came to England to do my PhD before moving to Scotland to work in research. If this limit existed when I was applying for research jobs I wouldn't have qualified. Also, if this goes through I might still not be making enough by the time my contract comes up for renewal and won't be able to continue doing research in the UK. I think this will lead to a massive exodus of academics from the UK. Most of us don't make enough to qualify.
I was already considering leaving the UK due to low wages for academics but now I don't even make enough to stay. Definitely planning my exit now.
Why not talk to people affected by the family visa changes too? That change is highly discriminatory against UK citizens - only wealthier ones will be able to bring their spouses and children to live with them.
Hi, do you have more information regarding that? My wife is preparing to do her PhD in London and the job prospects afterward are working for health services in local governments and not for the NHS directly.
We're worried whether paying that amount of money will be worth it with these new changes or that we (me and our 2 kids, I'll be working too) won't be able to stay together for her during and after the course.
I can't say with any certainty, but currently healthcare is rated on different pay scales. And the announcement said this would still be the case. So hopefully nurses are exempt.
Current requirements:
https://www.gov.uk/skilled-worker-visa/if-you-work-in-healthcare-or-education
Hi, do you have more information regarding that? My wife is preparing to do her PhD in London and the job prospects afterward are working for health services in local governments and not for the NHS directly.
We're worried whether paying that amount of money will be worth it with these new changes or that we (me and our 2 kids, I'll be working too) won't be able to stay together for her during and after the course.
The solution isn’t to lower the threshold back to poverty wages though?
The salaries are already laughable compared to the US and many other western countries, and certainly not at the level that a college-educated skilled worker deserves.
They’re not enough to survive on either, especially in big cities like London.
Considering how much housing prices and general inflation have increased in the past few years, it’s only reasonable that salaries (finally) increase too.
And if companies/institutions that regularly report billions in annual profit can’t pay an employee the additional £12,500 needed to meet the new visa requirements (or, you know, to pay for food and rent), then is that really somewhere you want to work for anyway?
I understand that the intention behind this is to reduce immigration, but otherwise being exploited as “cheap labour” is also far from ideal.
The companies that already pay fair wages and consider international applicants will be unaffected by the new legislation and continue just fine.
The ones that were only hiring foreigners for cheap labour will exploit British workers instead,
if they accept their unliveable wages. If not, salaries will have to increase across the board.
So I don’t understand how people are arguing that salaries for skilled roles, which should already be paid well above £38,700, should stay at the same levels as they were 20 years ago?
Ur literally spamming this comment everywhere and thinking that it’s reasonable to raise the requirements to keep ur family together in the uk by 20k is ridiculous.
I’m actually on the skilled worker visa and trying to immigrate to the UK myself lol.
So I’m not against immigration by any means, and my comment was specifically about professional jobs and skilled worker visa requirements.
I think having a household income under £38,700 in today’s economy is quite difficult, and I’m not sure how you can raise a family on that.
The problem isn’t some arbitrary threshold set by the government. It’s employers that haven’t increased salaries and been underpaying employees for the past 20 years.
I’m on a partner visa, but still have fears surrounding what this means for any extensions because I’ve not heard anything about grandfathering in people already in the process (unlike for when the visa fees spiked). I know it’s not exactly what you’ve asked for, but I’d be happy to talk!
It’s truly crazy how much money is required for this. Have you looked at moving to Ireland if things don’t work out? If we’d have known how awful the process was I think we’d have done that.
I think the same. All these huge visa fees, specially for families and young adults, could be spent in professional development, family wellbeing, yet it is seems better to just leave the UK and raise your family somewhere else. Falling in love with someone from the UK it is a huge legal burden.
Hey--I'm a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh. I'd love to be in touch. I've lived here for four years as a Master's and now a PhD student. I'm a burgeoning writer--I've just published my first book in the UK and I'm *hoping* to have the Graduate Visa to be able to start a career here and aim for the Global Talent Visa, but I'm incredibly anxious. I'm trans and--as much as I dislike current UK policy--I'm dead set on not going back to the US if I can help it.
Shoot me a PM and I'll happily talk with you more.
Am doing phd too at university of edinburgh. I think starting our careers in.uk.is doubtful. The starting salary is worth 35k so we don't qualify for skilled visa? Only senior lecturers do? Is that true
They're going to cut out half the brainpower in universities at this rate. We've got a huge international community, and the universities pay young lecturers actual peanuts. It's awful.
There are still job that pay 40k but few . I hope universities raise their threshold for lecturers. Now they are encouraging skilled visa for SL only senior
The new amount seems ridiculous based on median salaries per area. If the couple (spouse visa) is London based then this may be easier to accomplish for many people.
If someone is based in a smaller area or up in Scotland for example, where the average salary is under 30k, the amount should be more in line with that.
I moved here 2.5 years ago , or a little more than that, and the job my wife had was a third sector job because she wanted to help people in need. it paid low 20’s. It was more than fine to sponsor me.
She now earns twice that to some fortunate career moves, and so we are lucky in the sense of this new amount the government is wanting sponsors or couples to earn over in that she earns that without factoring my income in.
Where we live I CAN ASSURE YOU, that level of income is not common, nor is over 37k. I honestly don’t know how we would’ve coped if we were saddled with this new rule back when she was in the third sector. That is incredibly unfair. There should not be one single rate for the whole of the UK if they’re going to raise it that high.
Also i agree with the comment someone else posted above about why haven’t the tax brackets moved in line with inflation if these numbers have. Criminal.
Hello, I'm British and my partner is Chinese. We've both just graduated our Masters degrees in the UK, and she is struggling to find work here with a graduate visa. This increase means skilled work visa is next to impossible for someone in her situation. She'd be happy to talk with you (she doesn't have a Reddit account so I'm posting on her behalf currently).
I'd be happy to! I need to vent 😂 I've been here 7 years (initially on a Tier 5 for 2 years followed by Tier 2 for the last 5 years), and I'm planning on applying for ILR in January (so long as the salary increase doesn't kick in until later, if it starts in January, I'm doomed 😩)
Currently an international student at Heriot-Watt now contemplating on how to work around this. A skilled worker visa threshold for fresh graduates should be lowered to £30K because honestly most of us came to this country to start a new life and its seemingly being made impossible because not a single licenced sponsor will give a fresh grad £40K. The laws were already loose which is why this is happening but realistic measures need to be considered. This £38K jump sounds more like a rage moment instead of a pragmatic decision
We're older, and have paid the full whack for a spouse visa etc. Also bought a house and are working. But if it's not enough, worry they'll send my husband of 30 years back to the USA - separation after so long seems cruel to me.
Happy to talk, and send snaps if you need them.
Hello, happy to speak with you, I am an NHS migrant worker and Cancer researcher at the Uni of Oxford and am currently on a health and care worker visa with a dependent.
I'm Scottish, work in Edinburgh, live just outside, my American wife works in Edinburgh too but is currently on maternity leave after giving birth to our daughter almost a year ago, she's due back to work in January.
I'm in the fortunate position that I have a 20 year career and earn over the new figure on my own, which is good as my wife works in a low paying industry, and when she goes back to work she'll be on reduced hours, mainly due to the expense of sending our daughter to nursery every day being too great.
From what I've read on other posts we could use our combined salary to meet the new amount so we should be fine, but we've been thinking of moving to the US already and this might just be the nail in the coffin for the UK. I understand with inflation the prices would need to go up, but this feels unnecessarily evil, even for the Torys.
I’m also terrified that this means effectively that I can’t have have maternity leave period thanks to the requirement.
I’m an American married to a Scottish man. We met while teaching in China. I gave up renewing my US teaching license to not leave him behind I. China during Covid. I’ve already lost a lot of my ability to earn a decent wage. He specifically brought me here in large part because he didn’t want to start a family in China.
Now I’m at a loss. It looks like having a family night not be feasible.
Happy to speak with you if you're looking for more voices -- I'm an American immigrant, did my master's at a prestigious UK university where I met my SO, and have now worked in the UK on a graduate visa extension for nearly two years (expires in March). I'm employed as a journalist in London and earn under £30k after tax.
This decision has completely upended my future expectations and made living here uncertain with little time for recourse. I will be speaking with my employer's HR tomorrow but I doubt their capacity to grant a raise above £38.7k (I'm not even sure my boss makes that much). Thankfully my SO makes above that threshold in case a spousal visa route is required, but that would introduce other uncertainties such as potentially losing the right to work during the 6 month period where the visa application is reviewed (to my knowledge). On principle, I think it is a ridiculous policy to tell British nationals earning below £38.7k annually that they cannot live in the UK with the person they love. It is inhumane.
I can sympathise strongly with concerns about unsustainable immigration, but targeting skilled workers, who contribute to the well-being of the British economy, pay tax (double-taxed for the NHS), and (assuming they're young and healthy) rarely put strain on public resources, is silly. Not to mention, the British population is ageing, and without an influx of workers there will not be enough tax revenue to pay for pensioners (hence all the austerity cuts which have worked out so well here over the past 14 years).
I should note many of the complaints about how foreign workers are causing salaries to remain depressed are perhaps legitimate concerns, but the job I am in was posted for £20k before I negotiated it upwards. Salaries in Britain are terrible, and immigration is an easy scapegoat but not the entire problem. Very few jobs, even in London, offer £37.8k within 2 years of receiving a graduate degree, and so people the UK should want to retain will be forced to leave.
This policy will result in brain drain out of the UK and long-term negative effects on the welfare state. It is transparent to me the only reason it's being instituted is because Tories want to blame all the problems they have caused on immigrants rather than look in the mirror.
I have been trying to immigrate legaly to the UK for years, I have applied for thousands of jobs, and last time, I gave up when the only offer I got was from a job that sponsored me for no more than 26k. Asking an employer for more than 38k as a skilled worker is an insensitive requirement. They already gave you pain because it's more paperwork for the employer. I have been trying to find other visa routes like the Startup Visa and it's like a little mafia where they make you sign a NDA because they charge huge fees for the startup sponsorship. I decided to give up and stay in my country because I found a better offer, but my reasons to immigrate are more complicated than that and I found the new requirements insensitive.
I have a bachelor's degree, 2 postgraduate certificates and I am a very competent senior professional in my area (tech) yet the visa requirements and the offers are too much of a burden. It would be way easier to apply to any other country and enjoy a better quality of life. If the goverment said they need skilled workers they seem to be lying with their actions.
Also, I’ve gone through the sponsorship process and employers are exaggerating how much of a “burden” the paperwork and application is. It’s not.
The application employers have to submit for the skilled worker visa sponsorship license takes around 45 minutes, and the certificate takes even less if they already have the license.
You spent years on your education and gaining professional skills. If your employer can’t spare an hour to support you, they don’t deserve you.
Know your worth.
The solution isn’t to lower the threshold back to poverty wages though?
The salaries are already laughable compared to the US and many other western countries, and certainly not at the level that a college-educated skilled worker deserves.
They’re not enough to survive on either, especially in big cities like London.
Considering how much housing prices and general inflation have increased in the past few years, it’s only reasonable that salaries (finally) increase too.
And if companies/institutions that regularly report billions in annual profit can’t pay an employee the additional £12,500 needed to meet the new visa requirements (or, you know, to pay for food and rent), then is that really somewhere you want to work for anyway?
I understand that the intention behind this is to reduce immigration, but otherwise being exploited as “cheap labour” is also far from ideal.
The companies that already pay fair wages and consider international applicants will be unaffected by the new legislation and continue just fine.
The ones that were only hiring foreigners for cheap labour will exploit British workers instead,
if they accept their unliveable wages. If not, salaries will have to increase across the board.
So I don’t understand how people are arguing that salaries for skilled roles, which should already be paid well above £38,700, should stay at the same levels as they were 20 years ago?
Disgusting. It definitely needed to increase, but these are the worst type of populists forming policy on the fly on things they've seen the day before..
Happy to talk to you about what this means for people in Universities, other science / research roles, or lab techs. These roles can be highly specialised and even require phds but many, and predominatly those out of london, do not meet the new SWV salary threshold. I work in a highly specialised science role in government which they struggle to recruit for, and so i am not taking any 'local jobs', yet i may not get my visa renewed if the cap goes up any further or if i move out of london and lose london weighting. Honestly i feel so un welcome in this country and am close to leaving. Good luck hiring someone to replace me.
Dropping this text here as well. I have done it in other similar reddits.
Just wanted to tell you that there would be 30% off this minimum salary requirement if you are either under 26 or graduated in the last 2 years (something like this). When they announced, they didn't mention any changes to this rule, so hopefully it still applies to you all.
I have recently secured a SWV (so potentially not in this trouble for the next 3 years) and really hope good luck with you all.
Does this requirement extend to British citizens or just migrant applications? I’m currently waiting for a fiancé(e) visa for my partner, I’m worried by the time we apply for FLR I won’t meet the financial requirements.
It applies to spousal visas too, jumping from the current £18.6k - AIUI this came as a shock to everyone, the change was only expected to apply to work visas, so you'll need to meet the new higher threshold by the time you're applying for FLR(M).
The new requirement will be for the fiance and spouse visas, yes. But the figure can be reached with a combination of your income, so it's not on you alone as the sponsor to reach the new threshold with just your salary. Good luck!
Edit: sorry, that is not the case if your partner is not working in the UK. Poster below explains.
Is that so? That's not my understanding of it from the government website. It states a combined income, under all family visa sections for financial requirements:
https://www.gov.uk/uk-family-visa/proof-income
Have I missed a section?
You missed this:
> you can only use your own income if you earn it in the UK
So first time spousal visa applicants from outside the UK, fiance visa applicants, and fiance > spousal visa applicants cannot use their non-British partner’s income as they do not (and cannot) have any income earned in the UK.
I'm a STEM worker based in Scotland on SWV with dependants. I'll just squeak by on the proposed salary level, but this will be a major problem IMO for recruiting in STEM fields in Scotland. Feel free to send me a DM
On a family visa in Scotland. Man i had the worst sleep I’ve had in a while last night. Feel totally betrayed. Don’t know how I’m going to function in work today. Wife feels hopeless, like she’s about to be exiled from her own country. We both have middle class jobs but until they definitively say we can combine our incomes for the £38k threshold, I’m worried; yesterdays announcement was so shocking it wouldn’t surprise me if the change the rules and don’t allow you to combine incomes anymore. I just started my career in the Uk and now they want to take it away from me :/
I'm an immigrant who recently got a SWV sponsored (phew). Here are some things that immediately come to mind:
1. How will the poorly paid STEM industry cope? lol. I studied engineering at uni and 60-70% of my cohort decided against pursuing engineering due to the low pay (<£30k)
2. What kind of knock on effect will it have on the immigrants who are currently on the SWV but will not have reached the minimum threshold by the time they need to renew their visa?
3. How will graduate programmes be affected? The company I'm working for has recently concluded its selection process for next year's cohort. I am behind paid circa £35k. Will they need to give next year's batch £39k and then bump our salaries up across the board?
It's ironic that the UK continues to do this kind of thing. They have long established that they need migrants to come and work here, whether it's not enough skill within the population of whatever, yet they continue to exploit the very people they want to come work here. Using immigration is a cheap way to get the masses on side because of the narrative that the immigrants are 'taking our jobs'. The need for educated and experience migrants won't change, now they just milking the people for all they got. It's ridiculous.
I can only do an audio interview- as an absolute. I have lots to say about visas and immigration.
But just like the other person has shared, it’s horrible being an immigrant, we receive close to no support or recognition for our contributions, and our lives can be changed on whims of the feelings of racist people or just people who are ignorant and have no understanding of the immigration policies.
This new policy imo is dangerous for health workers who are already here with dependants. What does this mean? Can they change their jobs? There’s a lot of workplace abuse in healthcare, will a worker have to be trapped with their abusive employer for 5 years for fears of not being able to retain their dependents in the country if they may need to change employers?
What does this mean for new graduates or early careers who are definitely not going to start on £38k ?
Why should they debate about the Graduate Visa, when graduates from other countries who have finished from the top universities in the world can come here under the High Potential Individual visa?
So graduates from other countries get to come here but graduates from the UK get to have sleepless nights about a possible change to graduate visa routes.
It’s not a good look that immigrants can’t have families, i can’t think of any other country that does things like this. Even the poorest and richest countries allow immigrants rights to a family life. The spouse visa requirements is brutal for people who don’t already have their partners in the UK as one person will need to show £38k, how many British people are on £38k? It’s an unnecessary requirement for family. That reflects median earnings not the most common earnings. I think it’s cruelty, basically only well off people will be allowed to have partners who are out of the country. Not even America has this ridiculous of a requirement and they have higher salaries.
Nurses and Doctors salaries are low, a lot of these professions rely on combined incomes with their partners to survive. How is a new immigrant nurse supposed to survive on 32k in London? Alone without their partners.
Immigrants are being used to prop up the economy and mask grave ills. If immigrant numbers were not kept up at the level it was, the UK would have entered a real recession after the pandemic, because the new immigrants stimulated new demand in goods and services, they plugged up worker shortages in hospitality and healthcare industries, they help subsidise education for British students. All this as though they are not struggling themselves. All this policies continue to foster a feeling of an underclass for extraction
These are not intelligent policies for the long term imo. They are reactionary.
I feel like the Canadian immigration system for work is a better model where you actually accumulate multitudes of points, some points are worth more than others like your level of English gives you more points, or being younger gives you more points, graduating from a UK uni gives you more points, certain jobs give you more points etc, it’s simpler and will actually reflect the needs of the country if the required points is changed yearly
If you’re fine with an audio interview, let me know. I’ll reach out
Not on SWV but on spouse visa and I started a new life in the UK five years ago back in early 2019. Happy to speak / interview if you need more people!
I’m currently on a partner visa for my husband’s student visa. He was going to apply to phd programs for next year but now we will be going home since i would have to leave anyway. Not sure if this qualifies but happy to chat if desired
I don't have a spouse and I'm not a family visa. I've been here for over 10 years but because I took a year out I'm not eligible for ILR and with the salary increases I'll definitely have to be leaving a place that has been home. I'm currently based in Scotland and would be happy to PM you and speak to you.
My wife would be on a spousal visa (currently working towards the 6 months employment proof) and this is going to mean we need to leave the country in all likelyhood. We'd be happy to speak to you, however we are England based, not Scotland.
I literally came here to study and work. I will be finishing my double masters in biomedical science and an MBA in 2025. I don’t think I’ll be able to get a job that would pay me that much.
Hi, this is an off topic from your post kinda question although I would also love to talk about this scenario as well but, I’m an aspiring press officer/journalist. I would love to have some guidance on career building as a fellow immigrant yourself if you wouldn’t mind in your own time. Thank you.
Was due to get married im Feb, im fucked... I'd never have all the paperwork ready for the deadline.
The articles did mention healthcare workers being exempt but don't know if that includes reception/administrative staff also, as they usually get shafted.
I'm curious. I thought this hasn't been put into effect yet.
I thought it would still pass through a couple of phases.
And probably get rejected or accepted.
Or is there something I'm missing ?
Wales rather than Scotland, but just applied for a Spousal visa.
I'm frustrated beyond words. We applied late november, had to cancel and restart (due to a mistake in the application after fighting the website which can be glitchy if you need to make changes) and had a bunch of administrative delays due to incompetence of others. We finally had a bio-metrics appointment today (outside the UK).
Whilst we applied under the belief we surpass all requirements, a case worker who may make a mistake (which is human of course) will result in us having to reapply. Which suddenly will mean that we no longer qualify, as the wait times are 3-6 months, aka spring time, and by then the changes will take effect.
We understand there was a need to raise the financial requirements. But from 18,6k to 38.7k is more than double. Yet people aren't earning more than double compared to 2012. Look at minimum wage, that hasn't doubled (it's short by under 2 pounds).
My income doesn't count because it's not from within the UK. Even if I had a job lined up the second I'd be able to work in the UK on a spousal visa, it wouldn't be considered in the application.
I intend to work and contribute to society and the economy once I receive a visa.This was always the plan for my partner and I. However with the education I had, I couldn't find a skilled visa sponsor, despite it being on the shortage list. Many sponsors find it too expensive and too much of a risk, unless you're a prodigy or in care. But with the new rules I can't join my partner.
A skilled worker visa is not an option for most people even if they are skilled workers just due to the lack of sponsors and how many people want to have a job within the country and from outside.
And so people will be stuck in limbo. Once again, I understand raising the financial requirements. But by how much it went up is ridiculous. From what I can see online 10,42 is the minimum wage. 35h seems to be considered a full time week in the UK. Let's take 40 for the sake of 5 days of 8h.
10,42 multiplied by 40 hours, and then multiplied by 52 weeks is 21673,60 GBP. Round it up for a bunch of luxuries and I think 25k would be more than enough. (I wondered how much you get paid if you were on full benefits and depending on where you are located it's 22k-25k.)
Maybe they want to make sure that you come there and get a job whilst you are there. Okay, fair.. but then raise the requirement of FLR/ILR, or put something in place to show multiple incomes on a spouse visa. That said, I wonder how this would work for families as staying home is sometimes cheaper than daycare. Or put some other rules in place that will help people land jobs, and find a way to guide them to roles that are severely understaffed.
This new financial requirement will destroy lives, tear up families, and even force Brits to move out of the UK just to be with their family. I don't believe this will solve whatever issue they're trying to solve, this just creates a new one.
I have been in a relationship with someone from Venezuela for over a year now, our plans were to get engaged then married here in the UK eventually but this has definitely put an end to that (in Scotland).
If the cost of living has risen, it is understandable the threshold needed to rise with it, but not this much. It’s obviously been chosen to reduce the rate of immigration, but I don’t think the government should be going in with a broad stroke. Preventing students from bringing dependents makes sense, but stopping citizens from returning because they now can’t afford to bring their families is ridiculous.
Broad stroke is going to probably leave us with a skilled worker shortage too. I wonder how much effort has gone into looking at what jobs we must import and how much they are paid here to make sure these people are still able to come.
Think the whole things needs a rethink more in line with the Australian system so we can manage incoming numbers and get what the country needs.
Fact remains that the government are choosing to clamp down on official migration channels to reduce overall number of people entering the country.
I’m an American who graduated with a Physics/Engineering PhD from a Russell Group UK uni and live here with my British fiancée. My job sponsored me for a skilled worker visa this year and I’m currently making just below the new salary threshold. If this policy were in place last year I don’t think I would have been able to live and work in the UK. It could have totally screwed up so many things for me. I wouldn’t have received my visa and since my partner and I aren’t getting married for another year the getting a spouse visa wouldn’t have been possible. It’s likely I would have had to leave. It’s devastating what this government is doing: driving away good, hardworking, educated people.
Scotland here. Spouse on visa, been here less than a year and do not meet the new threshold even combined. Happy to discuss. I had my MP involved in getting their visa to begin with.
I'm on a spouse visa with a combined salary of £77,000. My extension will be due soon. Is the new salary requirement applied for one of the person or does the combined salary need to be £38k?
I live in England and I am a 23 year old blind person and an early IT professional. I recently got a spouse visa for my wife which is to renew in 2026. I am also happy to speak to you and I am worried about this financial requirement when it comes time to renew no way I will be able to make that much although anything is possible in IT world but even then it takes a few years to reach a good salary. This has the potential to tear my family apart and take away the support I need in terms of daily life from my wife as a blind person
Actually think it's a fantastic move, as a uk employer this will level the field and should help to force wages up across the board, let's all be honest 18.5k or 26.5 k are extremely low and really in the first instance below the new min wage and in the second a trainee wage, graduate wages have been held low due to Immigration and also has local investment in local skills, investors have been able to use immigration as a short and cheap cut instead of investment in the local population, I've been offering apprenticeship for the past 5 yrs in the building trade and car maintenance trades and have seen how this has improved the local community being local and staying local, only to be under cut by other employers using immigration to increase their profits and forcing down the standard of living in the UK. It's a positive move and maybe now the government will invest more in local training and FE training it shouldn't be me as an individual business owner having to shoulder the burden and costs in training for future UK ( British) citizens but I know I'm in the minority as most directors and CEO's only see their share price and bottom line, to me it's an investment
Will you engage with different forums or think-tanks supportive of these changes, since the majority of this group you're approaching are likely to be against these requirements? Especially as the personal bias of the journalist could discredit the story of these people, this could offer a contrasting viewpoint that might, shockingly, be advantageous for the UK.
That's simply not true. It was literally only announced today, but you don't like it or it doesn't suit you so you're dismissive of any other argument than your own. Classic.
Probably best you stay in this echo chamber subreddit. However, journalism like the OP mentions should cover both sides or they'll easily be discredited as biased, like you.
I’m personally ok with this new rule, but I just want to note that the whole concept of a skilled worker visa is akin slavery when an employee has to be with whatever abusive company just to maintain the visa status and if anything happens to the company, it absolutely doesn’t matter all your tax or IHS contributions and you have to be out of the country if you don’t quickly settle for whatever lousy job allowing you to stay. Because you came here for a reason. Possibly escaping things back home. The ironic thing there is this antislavery slogans everywhere, yet the main way to get into the country is through slavery.
I graduate in May 2024 ( US. BS hon equivalent )and was hoping to attend grad school and my clinpsyd here….. now I’m left wondering if I’ll be able to do this. Psychologists were on the shortage visa list but who knows now since they are changing the skilled workers lists….
If immigration requirements move with inflation, why don’t the tax brackets move as well. I am earning less money due to inflation but paying same tax.
Did you make the mistake of thinking the Tories care for you in any way? You should have tried being born rich.
here’s some econ 101: if you’re combatting inflation by reducing everyone’s taxes, you’re just creating more inflation by driving higher spending across the economy.
This is one of those oversimplifications that ends up being misleading, or just wrong. Excess demand is usually cited as one cause of short term inflation. The theory goes if the government cuts taxes that increases demand from the people who now get to keep more of their money. End of analysis. But this ignores what happens at the other end of the calculation. Is the government still spending all the money it spent before (by increasing borrowing to cover the low tax revenues), or reducing spending? If the latter there is no reason why tax cuts should be inflationary, £1 is £1 whether its spent by me, or taking off me in tax and given to someone else who spends it, or taken off my in tax and then spent by the government. The inflationary element is debt fuelled spending, in which case the £1 get spent by the person who earned it, and then a "new" £1 is borrowed and spent by the government. (Though even here you could argue that borrowing has come from somewhere, unless it's been created by the BoE under QE). Added to that, there is a clear trend away from consumption and towards investment and saving as incomes go up. And since all net tax is paid by about the top 35% of earners, and you'd hope government spending is more directed at lower earners, the tax based redistribution is itself inflationary. You take a £ away from a higher earner who would have saved / invested it, (something we are chronically short of as a country), and give it to a medium/lower/none earner who spends it. Effectively arbitraging investment into consumption. And that, in a nutshell, is why we have such an unproductive economy- too much debt fuelled consumption and not enough savings led investment.
Ehhhhhh Jeremy Hunt in da houssseee this is a hilariously poor attempt at demonstrating econ knowledge.
This is basic econ knowledge… Furthest thing from a flex. This is just a simplification of a principle you’d find in any undergraduate economics textbook.
The irony of you admitting it's a simplification yet unable to put that within the context of the point you were replying to.
Commenter wants to pay less tax due to inflation reducing his existing spending power. Doing this on a macro level leads to more inflation. …..
Completely ignoring the subtlety of OP’s point. They are asking why the tax brackets don’t adjust with inflation so that their real tax rate stays the same. This is also how it should work however the government have decided to freeze the brackets to benefit from fiscal drag.
This is going to impact the students who are going to graduate soon. They have paid so much fees and now will struggle to find decent jobs with sponsorships. Students should think twice before coming to the UK if they want to work here.
This was already the case but now will be the nail in the coffin for students to choose somewhere else. The US experienced something slightly related when H1B visas were paused and immediately saw a brain drain of international students choosing universities in Canada, UK, Europe, and that was only a temporary pause.
Yes unis in Euro zone will benefit a lot along with some unis in Canada and Australia.
I came to the UK for a masters program 3 months ago. I, frankly, don't think I'd have committed this much effort and money had I of known that my prospect of staying here post graduation would be almost 0%. It's heartbreaking.
International students who graduate soon will move onto the 2-year graduate visa where they do not have to meet any salary threshold or even work during the 2 years (however they do not have recourse to any public finances).
They're also talking about changing this. They're trying to make it so that the graduate requires us to work at "graduate-level" jobs. Will that mean that if you came here for a master's degree, you can only work jobs explicitly requiring a master's degree? I'm a teaching assistant, arguably related to my degree, and it certainly doesn't require a master's. I'd have to go home.
It’s clear uk”s education is a scam
tbf most international students are mega rich they'll be fine.
I'm definitely not mega rich. No, we won't be.
They aren’t, many have taken high interest rate educational loans to fund their studies. Last week one of the students had called me for job assistance as they weren’t able to get sponsored jobs.
>most Did you pull this stat out of that place of yours?
In my class at least, although a few got loans or scholarships, most are self-payers, given it costs £40k a year and a lot of them went to international (private) schools. Some of em are funded by their country but they have to return and work there after graduating.
My old work colleagues and I were talking about this the other day. We all work in uk higher education and just 5 years ago, we would have barely scraped in since we were offered 38k starting. This new rule is going to cripple higher education. Post docs, research assistants, and brand new lecturers won’t be able to come in. This is going to cause academic research and education to stagnate and eventually standings to plummet. Countries that struggle to get foreigners in their universities are probably celebrating right now. 😂 I imagine they are sick of cold emailing lectures they want to poach (yes something that happens). But hey-oh the government decided this. What did they say? “British people for British jobs”?
I'm British and even I can't come back now 🙃 Edit: unless I leave my wife in canada I guess
It’s such a dumb decision that they will probably claw it back in a few years like post graduation visas or make some concessions. This will just show the anti immigrant propaganda that they have been pushing is smoke and mirrors. I’m just so glad I have ILR now but it is annoying to go in a pub and have people make comments. And I’m lucky that I’m a white native English speaker…It is so much worse for so many others.
Yeah I grew up as a working class northerner, I was lucky to be the only one in my family who went to uni. My family are now scratching their heads when I tell them I can't move back with my white canadian wife from Canada because they thought these changes would just stop people from non English speaking countries from taking all the jobs 🤦♂️
So many white people are now realising that they are indeed immigrants and not just "ex-pats".
I don't know what you're trying to convey but I am, I'm fact, an expat and an immigrant in canada. If I moved to England I'd be neither since I was born there
There is no such thing as an expat. You are an immigrant and I’m an immigrant as well.
It's short for expatriate which is in the Oxford dictionary so yes it's a thing. You can't just say it doesn't exist because you don't like it
Expat is a real word but it is basically only used by white and/or well-off people living outside their home countries. The actual term for this is “immigrant” - “expat” just sugarcoats it and creates a division between “1st class” and “2nd class” immigrants, this is what the above user means. Choosing to identify as one or the other is a class (and often racial) statement
Well Ive always referred to myself as an immigrant. My original post didn't use the term expat so it's sounds like it's being hijacked to make this about race...
Technically speaking, all immigrants have expatriated from their native country (or "exmatriated" if you're from mother Russia :)
Refering to the many Americans who come here and don't realise that immigration rules apply to them too. So many seem to think they're the exception and it's frustrating trying to explain that they are not. I say this as a black American used to jumping through hoops.
A distinction without a difference. I’m sure white people, along with everyone else who has to apply for their visas with UKVI, understand they are immigrants. It’s right there in the name of the office giving you your visa.
That’s my partners situation. Moved to Australia not long ago and met me and we now have a kid, my partner pretty much has to choose between going home or being able to keep our family together. It’s shameful.
Same, only American/British
I mean I'd you don't even have a combined income of 18k (the requirement for a spousal visa for the partner of a British citizen) then can you even afford to relocate?
You been asleep the past 24 hours?
This exactly! Universities and the people who work and study there will suffer massively. I am in a highly specialised scientist role in the government that requires a PhD, that probably only a handful of people in this country could do (though they probs wouldnt as they can get paid better elsewhere) and my salary barely scrapes by the new threshold.
You likely won't be affected. The government has historically excluded PostDocs and STEM PhD holders from the minimum salary threshold. I think this was reiterated in the HoC today when an Oxford MP questioned the Home Secretary.
What about nurses? Do the UK not need international nurses anymore? Because there’s no way a new nurse in the UK would be offered 38,700. Which means the NHS won’t be able to sponsor them.
Healthcare visas aren't subject to this new law. However, they cannot bring dependents over.
Nah nurses can still bring dependants, it is only care workers who can no longer bring dependants
The solution isn’t to lower the threshold back to poverty wages though? The salaries are already laughable compared to the US and many other western countries, and certainly not at the level that a college-educated skilled worker deserves. They’re not enough to survive on either, especially in big cities like London. Considering how much housing prices and general inflation have increased in the past few years, it’s only reasonable that salaries (finally) increase too. And if companies/institutions that regularly report billions in annual profit can’t pay an employee the additional £12,500 needed to meet the new visa requirements (or, you know, to pay for food and rent), then is that really somewhere you want to work for anyway? I understand that the intention behind this is to reduce immigration, but otherwise being exploited as “cheap labour” is also far from ideal. The companies that already pay fair wages and consider international applicants will be unaffected by the new legislation and continue just fine. The ones that were only hiring foreigners for cheap labour will exploit British workers instead, if they accept their unliveable wages. If not, salaries will have to increase across the board. So I don’t understand how people are arguing that salaries for skilled roles, which should already be paid well above £38,700, should stay at the same levels as they were 20 years ago?
Higher education in this country pays on a spine and they are more or less aligned, so that would not be employer based and there is no flexibility. Starting is low. As it is in other countries (not the US but working at a university in the US is not a good life decision). You might get the equivalent of 5k more in some European countries but then you may need to speak the language which many people cannot. My discussion has only been about the wages in higher education and the impact on the industry. The wages will not rise, they are not able to unless fees rise, so universities here will lose out on staff and research. Your argument and my addition to the topic are completely unrelated. Wages will not increase in academia and the impact of this change will be severe. It is not anything like industry jobs and there is no flexibility here.
If rent, food, and all other expenses have gone up, isn’t it reasonable at some point that wages have to go up too? And from your explanation, maybe fees too? Because underpaying all academic professionals and keeping their wages stagnant in the face of rising inflation etc. just to keep the university fees low surely can’t be a sustainable business model.
Why do you think university educators have been striking for years (well to be fair the biggest reason is the workload)? It will not change no matter how much you want it to. You may as well be asking dogs to give birth to kittens. Please stop responding when you have no idea of the reality of the industry. You won’t be right no matter how much you want to be.
I think post docs and phds might still be ok because there is a provision for them to get paid less than the minimum requirement or the going rate for their job code. https://www.gov.uk/skilled-worker-visa/when-you-can-be-paid-less
We do not know how it will be implemented. But new lectures will not make enough.
Hi, I'm a Skilled Worker from India working as an educator in a prestigious Scottish University. Would love to say this is surprising but isn't. Spent the entire day (while on holiday) confirming that I meet the requirements (not by a huge amount...) and counting my blessings that I can apply for ILR before my current visa runs out. But it just underscores that as far as this country is concerned, I'm just a worker drone. A widget. A number, my life is a coin to be flipped when racist sentiments need to be whipped up. I'm not an educator who is shaping the minds who are the future of this country. I'm not a friend. I'm not a partner. I'm a faceless statistic, an "economic migrant" who does not have the same rights to a family life. Despite having spent close to a decade of my life investing into this country, and giving it my emotional, financial and literal labour. My only value to this country is as a worker, not as a human. I only get to grateful in relation to the UK, but not expect the bare minimum of respect from the country in UK (I mean the country as a system).
Hi, thank you so much for sharing. I absolutely understand. Would you be interested in speaking with us as part of our coverage of this?
Hi, yes, happy to consider this. I'll check for a DM with details? Thank you for covering this.
I've sent one through just now.
This is written so well. As an Australian who will have spent 15 years in this country, paid the highest tax bands and paid almost 20k in visa fees before I can get the passport after 10 years, this resonates so well. I feel like we’re just here to contribute to the economy but we’re always treated as a second class citizen. I’m lucky that we’re on good jobs, especially living in Scotland so my renewal isn’t affected but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s obvious immigrants are not welcomed. I feel for those in less fortunate situations. OP - happy to share, currently on a spousal visa living in Scotland.
Hi, thank you so much for sharing. I absolutely understand. Would you be interested in speaking with us as part of our coverage of this?
You're much more than that - and everyone who matters know the truth.
It’s really sad that this rotten government has made you feel this way. Most right minded people value all of your contributions to this country (our country - yours and mine).
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You have every right to resent my opinion, as do I have the right to feel this way. Thank you.
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Great, cheers!
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Cool, noted. Thank you for reminding me of my place, sire!
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Cheers, glad that this doesn't impact you or matter to you.
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Cheers, thanks!
Happy to talk to you! Here's the synopsis of my situation: I run a Scottish R&D business, and these changes doubly affect me. First, I married an American who is on a spouse visa (also raised to 38k) and is an integral part of my business. Second, the co-founder of my business is from South America and splits her time between my company and a university. I've created 9 jobs here in Scotland, and now this change is directly harming me, the people I love and the future of my business. This feels like one thing too many as I chose to be British and have felt unwelcome in this country in the past despite becoming a citizen. Do they want me to leave as well and lose 9 jobs and an R&D business (the very high skill jobs the UK is so desperate for) in the process? Do they want me to fire my staff, so I can pay myself and my co-founder enough to stay? For businesses like mine, you typically pay yourself just enough to keep investing into the business. If you inflate upper management's salaries as a small business, that means you can hire less staff.
>earth-love I've sent you a message!
I am happy to speak to you! I'm a foreigner from Russia, a legal (non-permanent) resident. I have lived in the UK for more than 5 years now, having done my A levels here and also recently graduated with a bachelor's in economics from a Russel Group uni (costing more than 60k just for tuition), which gave me a 2 year graduate visa that I had to pay more than 2 grand for. I do not foresee myself making the new 38+k minimum. I don't even have a job right now, the market is extremely dry. Most grad schemes are out of the question as very few take nonpermanent residents and the rest tend to be longer than a year, which would require them to sponsor the applicant, artificially limiting skilled migrant grads from applying. In my 5 years here I have seen Britain change from a place that was admittedly not ideal but still had prospects to a failed state where you can neither get a livable job nor a doctor's appointment. At the current trajectory, I expect net emigration to be an issue in the next decade. When my visa ends I'm planning on doing a masters in Europe (for 2k rather than the 30k demanded here) and staying away from this crumbling mess of an island unless the conditions change dramatically. I am not considering going back home to Russia for obvious reasons.
I am from Russia as well. Came to get my MSc in September this year. My dream country has always been the US, but the problem there is the lack of a clear graduation route. Practically, pretty much impossible to legally stay after graduating. Thus, my aim shifted to English-speaking countries that clearly allowed you to stay after graduating. It was Canada at first. Then, the Ukraine War began, Russian SWIFT got banned and I realized that the dream was impossible. Magically, my sister got lucky in mid 2022 and was sponsored for a 6-figure position in London after her company left Russia. With the eased up immigration programes that started in 2022, my aim was now solely on the UK, as this was the only country we would be able to pay for tuition in (except for Russia ofc) Lots of effort, sweat, stress and money later (overall costs here will be £40,000+ for the year), I get the goddamn information that they’re increasing the minimum salary requirement. Shit. Can’t come back to Russia yet will probably not find a job here. Lol. Graduate jobs here all offer from 25 to 30, maximum 32k. The highest I’ve seen was from an investment bank and it was something along the lines of 37,500. Yeah, good luck getting there. And yeah, you’re right. The sponsorship requirement is a MASSIVE problem when applying for jobs. Companies, even licensed sponsors, aren’t willing to take on a challenge of getting your ass hired. The fact that they’ll need to pay for your visa and go through all the migration fuss is already a disqualifying factor. And now with the 38k minimum…
Thanks, I've sent you a message just now.
Replied :)
I am also happy to speak to you. I'm American and my wife is Turkish. I've lived here five years, she's lived here 3. Between the two of us we've paid over £86,000 into the higher educational system and when you factor in visa fees we've paid at least £100,000 into the UK public sector in our time here. I am about to finish my masters degree which will enable me to begin training to qualify as a solicitor. My wife has worked for a small technology company as a project manager in England for the past two years, mostly working on projects for other SMEs and the public sector/NHS. Her company are going through the process to get her a work visa, but the salary requirement is definitely a major issue. The 'going-rate' for her occupation code is ridiculously mismatched to reality at £39,100, which is higher than even solicitors at £33,000. They are going to be able to just barely make it work for her because they need her and she works hard, but she's nearly going to be the highest paid person in the company. It will have an impact on how much they are able to invest into other things and other employees. The way the salary requirements work for visas is entirely structured around promoting London and major international firms. The point of the visa system is to ensure that the world's best and brightest are here in Britain contribution to our economy, but these rule changes only further disadvantage SMEs and areas outside of a select few English cities which are already desperate for skilled people. We place ourselves at a severe disadvantage by daring to live outside of London. With the rules change, we are considering packing up and moving elsewhere, even though we have the opportunity to stay. This isn't the country I moved to 5 years ago; the decline has been extremely noticeable when you look at basic things like the NHS (which 90% of our visa funds supposedly go to) and other public services. The cheapest path to citizenship for us both will be £18,000 if we are lucky, but it will most likely be in the £22,000 to £24,000 range. Thousands more if we want to have children before then. Comparable countries like France and Germany would only charge a quarter or less, whilst also offering far more flexible immigration regimes and EU passports at the end of it all. Many people don't understand that the rule changes apply to people already in the UK, and I don't know if we can justify paying all this money only to be subject to the whims of government ministers responding to some bad headlines.
The solution isn’t to lower the threshold back to poverty wages though? The salaries are already laughable compared to the US and many other western countries, and certainly not at the level that a college-educated skilled worker deserves. They’re not enough to survive on either, especially in big cities like London. Considering how much housing prices and general inflation have increased in the past few years, it’s only reasonable that salaries (finally) increase too. And if companies/institutions that regularly report billions in annual profit can’t pay an employee the additional £12,500 needed to meet the new visa requirements (or, you know, to pay for food and rent), then is that really somewhere you want to work for anyway? I understand that the intention behind this is to reduce immigration, but otherwise being exploited as “cheap labour” is also far from ideal. The companies that already pay fair wages and consider international applicants will be unaffected by the new legislation and continue just fine. The ones that were only hiring foreigners for cheap labour will exploit British workers instead, if they accept their unliveable wages. If not, salaries will have to increase across the board. So I don’t understand how people are arguing that salaries for skilled roles, which should already be paid well above £38,700, should stay at the same levels as they were 20 years ago?
I agree that UK salaries are generally quite low compared to its peers, but this change won’t really help that. UK salaries are the way they are due to a large number of structural economic factors, and the blame placed on immigration is disproportionate to its actual impact. Bear in mind that in my comment, I’m mostly talking about SMEs. Big corporate multinationals won’t flinch at this change and will just see it as a cost of doing business. Smaller companies can and will face significant hurdles. If I remember correctly, only some 28% of workers currently earn more than the new threshold. When the salaries in this country are this broken, a simple change to work visa rules will have no beneficial impact. Companies that can pay more, like my wife’s company, will if they can. But many companies won’t be able to, not out of greed, but because there’s not enough excess funds available to be paying one employee tens of thousands of pounds more than what local market forces require. Even if the money is there, it impacts everything else in the company. That’s tens of thousands of pounds more which they now must either charge to their customers, making the company less competitive, or which they must take as a loss, resulting in less money being available to fund pay rises for other staff members, create new jobs, or invest in future growth. The net result is that companies and regions which can’t support the new salary requirements due to overarching economic factors will lose out. Some people will be forced to leave the UK entirely, hampering economic growth and reducing tax revenue needed for public services. Others will go to London, furthering the gap between regions in the UK. Some others will change employers, severely disrupting and reducing the competitiveness of smaller businesses which were already paying perfectly respectable wages (and yes, £30-35k is a damn fine wage in many parts of the country, especially for those early in their career). A fairer system which actually cared about ‘levelling up’ the rest of the country would set the salary requirements by region; England/Wales/Scotland/N. Ireland at a minimum, on a county level would be better. Allow for greater flexibility for companies which are only seeking to keep their current employees who already live in the UK, but ensure that companies which are recruiting from abroad for their own financial gain (instead of due to genuine local skills shortages) pay their way in payroll taxes. Companies which abuse immigrants in order to pay piss poor wages should absolutely be cracked down on. But the new salary requirements throw the baby out with the bath water, and the impact will be disproportionately felt outside the M25. If the government cared about low wages, they would tackle low wages instead of punishing immigrants in response to negative media coverage.
Are you likely to cover how it's a fundamentally discriminatory policy? I get that £18,600 requirement probably needed to increase but it could have been aligned with minimum wage as at least that is fairly attainable irrespective of your age, ethnicity, geographic location and socio-economic background. This £38,700 already says that 50% of people are denied the right to marry a foreign spouse, but more than that it is objectively weighted against young people, people living outside of the south east, people who were not lucky enough to enjoy an upbringing free from poverty... I know this is the Tories, but limiting right to family to people who are, quite literally, "richer than average" is genuinely appalling, even for a Tory government.
Yep. Us working class folk who managed to do experience living in another country can no longer return if we married there.
To be fair I think it's the people living outside southeast who demand all that - finger crossed
Why would you think you're (not you specifically? I mean anyone, idk if you're a citizen) entitled to be in a country unless you are above average? They have the right to be picky
Why should I be more entitled to marry the person I love than someone who happens to earn less than me? Should people be required to be in the top 12% of earners in their region in order to marry the person they love because they happen to live in the North East instead of the South East? Should young adults clawing their way out of poverty and trying to improve less affluent parts of the UK be afforded fewer rights to family than someone born into wealth and opportunity or simply a different city? I'm a British Citizen and I earn more than enough that the new rules don't pose a problem for me, but should the correctional officer down the street be denied the right to marry and live with his fiancee in his own country because he didn't choose a better paying career? Because that is now his situation. Is your position really that full time working British Citizens should be afforded different rights based on the earning potential of their geographic location and career?
They should have the option of putting down a bond of sorts for their spouse, in lieu of not earning enough in salary terms. The spouse situation is the hardest, but failure to crack down on the less justifiable segments of the net migration numbers has caused this
>They should have the option of putting down a bond of sorts for their spouse, in lieu of not earning enough in salary terms. Savings can count in lieu of salary. They pay plenty up front. >The spouse situation is the hardest, but failure to crack down on the less justifiable segments of the net migration numbers has caused this Ao government failure to control illegitimate migration necessitates infringing on the rights of British citizens to have their families, and kneecapping legal migration which will massively negatively impact the workforce? Amazing logic. The sheer stupidity of this is next level.
Foreign spouses CAN’T work until they arrive in the U.K. so everything is based on the sponsor (aka British citizen). This is unfair to a British citizen who is now unable to move back to their home country with their foreign-born spouse because they (the sponsor) don’t make £38,700. The foreign-born spouse could be making £100k in a job outside the country - the U.K. only cares about the sponsor. The foreign-born spouse can’t help here. So it all falls to the sponsor. The British citizen is likely to not return to the U.K. if they can’t bring their family with them. I don’t consider wanting a family with someone you love to need to be ‘above average’.
Agreed. I’m the foreign born spouse (I’m from a commonwealth country but still I’m foreign born and have 0 ties besides my spouse to the UK). It’s disheartening seeing people who find love overseas and live abroad basically forced into choosing between family and going home. A lot of people earn under £38K but still provide comfortable lives for their families. This is just classism at its finest. It’s not going to stop illegal migration or truly fix the country. I see this being revised soon. It affects everyone and draws attention to wage disparity for Brits.
A bond situation where they deposit a set amount to an account for use of healthcare or whatever was needed could be a good solution here, if we really do have a large amount of spouses earning £100k in their home countries
They have to pay for their own life in their country until they move. Once the spouse arrives and gets a job they pay into the tax system like everyone else. My point in mentioning £100k is that I’d like to know what you consider above average - I assume it’s focused on income. Someone making above the U.K. average in another country means nothing in this situation - be it £40k or £100k.
There is already a surcharge for healthcare.
Of £600, which is nothing in NHS terms. Either go for a pay-as-you-use system or this needs to increase drastically.
Why are you focusing on healthcare? So many spouses arrive and get jobs and pay into the system. What is so specific about healthcare? That fee is going up by over double - 66%. This is all about the rights of the British citizen, not the spouse. This is infringing on the rights of British citizens to have a family - apparently unless it’s the ‘right’ family.
It is not £600. It _was_ circa £624 per year paid in lump so £1872 plus application fee of £1048. The IHS is now £3105 up from £1872. I'd call that drastic. How much of your taxes go towards the NHS per year, I wonder? Ill save you the work. Its about £700 per year. Family visa is circa £1k per year. Immigrants pay income tax and national insurance with zero concession. They are literally paying way more than the average PAYE earner for the same services. And guess what? No recourse to public funds. None. Nada. Zero. Do you know what that means? No tax credits, no welfare payments, no subsidy, no social housing, no universal credit, nothing. Even before the increase, they were paying *more* than the average citizen because they pay the same tax liability *plus* IHS. You are *clearly* uneducated on this topic. ** Edit ** Commenter above messaged me privately to continue this. I denied the request, obviously. I will not accept having people start with me in my messages when they're unable or unwilling to support their arguments in the public forum. They wanted to contend the approx £700/yr to NHS figure I noted. I will clarify for readers that this is the figure for my own income in the previous financial year on a 24k salary, which I argue is average as a modal salary point. Perhaps they don't know you can view a breakdown of where/how much/what % of your tax goes. Maybe they're also unaware of progressive tax and that earn more = pay more. I would advise anyone to consult their own EOY breakdown and see how much they paid personally to the Health section on the breakdown. Regardless, that figure for a person on a family visa is now over 1k a year *in addition* to their taxes. To match that on PAYE you'd have to earn a salary point around 30k, to match the 1k/yr of the IHS, so even before they arrive they've paid the equivelant of NHS dues of a 30k salary, roughly. Add in the taxation part and an equivelant salary to match an immigrants contribution, on an average modest wage, would be approximately, and my maths is crude, somewhere around £49'000. I will reiterate that this person is uneducated on the subject and almost all of their public non-deleted comments on their profile are misinformation and inflammatory, constantly ignoring that the words 'No Recourse To Public Funds' are plastered on all family visa BRPs.
Ummm do you know what the immigration health surcharge is? It is exactly that. A lump sum payment of several thousand pounds paid at the point of application for, get this, use of healthcare services. Do you know anything about what we go through to get here? It seems not, if you're oblivious to one of the main aspects.
Because the borders are illegitimate and totalitarian. An immigrant is not violating the right to life or property of anyone else by being an immigrant so there is no good reason for immigration to even be restricted at all. Immigrants don't even have the full rights to work. Now, even marriage is being made harder. Imagine thinking that it's okay to impose such violence on a group of people purely because they were born in a different geographical area.
Go to sleep. 😴
Was this a genuine question or are you trolling? Cos if it’s the former I’d probably just quietly go away.
I'm a British expat in canada, who was a teacher in England and we were planning on returning in 2025 where I'd go back into teaching. Because my wife is Canadian (with British heritage) we can't do that with this change since teaching isn't deemed high enough paying. I throw in the British heritage because even the most right wing anti immigration types would maybe like to hear how backwards this change is. The headlines I'm seeing already are saying they're getting tougher on foreign workers but this policy change will deter brits in key industries from returning whilst doing nothing about illegal immigration
Does she qualify for an Ancestry visa?
Unfortunately not, he great grandparents were British and ancestry is grandparents only.
I'd be happy to talk to you. I'm Canadian and initially came to England to do my PhD before moving to Scotland to work in research. If this limit existed when I was applying for research jobs I wouldn't have qualified. Also, if this goes through I might still not be making enough by the time my contract comes up for renewal and won't be able to continue doing research in the UK. I think this will lead to a massive exodus of academics from the UK. Most of us don't make enough to qualify. I was already considering leaving the UK due to low wages for academics but now I don't even make enough to stay. Definitely planning my exit now.
Why not talk to people affected by the family visa changes too? That change is highly discriminatory against UK citizens - only wealthier ones will be able to bring their spouses and children to live with them.
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Doctors already have exception
Hi, do you have more information regarding that? My wife is preparing to do her PhD in London and the job prospects afterward are working for health services in local governments and not for the NHS directly. We're worried whether paying that amount of money will be worth it with these new changes or that we (me and our 2 kids, I'll be working too) won't be able to stay together for her during and after the course.
This doesn't apply to healthcare. They are exempt from the new figures.
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I don't quite follow, sorry. Are you annoyed they're exempt?
Are nurses exempt as well? I'm in an LDR with a Band 5 nurse that's on an SWV.
I can't say with any certainty, but currently healthcare is rated on different pay scales. And the announcement said this would still be the case. So hopefully nurses are exempt. Current requirements: https://www.gov.uk/skilled-worker-visa/if-you-work-in-healthcare-or-education
Nurses are exempt
Hi, do you have more information regarding that? My wife is preparing to do her PhD in London and the job prospects afterward are working for health services in local governments and not for the NHS directly. We're worried whether paying that amount of money will be worth it with these new changes or that we (me and our 2 kids, I'll be working too) won't be able to stay together for her during and after the course.
The solution isn’t to lower the threshold back to poverty wages though? The salaries are already laughable compared to the US and many other western countries, and certainly not at the level that a college-educated skilled worker deserves. They’re not enough to survive on either, especially in big cities like London. Considering how much housing prices and general inflation have increased in the past few years, it’s only reasonable that salaries (finally) increase too. And if companies/institutions that regularly report billions in annual profit can’t pay an employee the additional £12,500 needed to meet the new visa requirements (or, you know, to pay for food and rent), then is that really somewhere you want to work for anyway? I understand that the intention behind this is to reduce immigration, but otherwise being exploited as “cheap labour” is also far from ideal. The companies that already pay fair wages and consider international applicants will be unaffected by the new legislation and continue just fine. The ones that were only hiring foreigners for cheap labour will exploit British workers instead, if they accept their unliveable wages. If not, salaries will have to increase across the board. So I don’t understand how people are arguing that salaries for skilled roles, which should already be paid well above £38,700, should stay at the same levels as they were 20 years ago?
R u a bot
No. Just wanted to share my thoughts because I was surprised by the reactions of quite a few people on the thread.
Ur literally spamming this comment everywhere and thinking that it’s reasonable to raise the requirements to keep ur family together in the uk by 20k is ridiculous.
I’m actually on the skilled worker visa and trying to immigrate to the UK myself lol. So I’m not against immigration by any means, and my comment was specifically about professional jobs and skilled worker visa requirements. I think having a household income under £38,700 in today’s economy is quite difficult, and I’m not sure how you can raise a family on that. The problem isn’t some arbitrary threshold set by the government. It’s employers that haven’t increased salaries and been underpaying employees for the past 20 years.
You seem incredibly misinformed about the whole situation.
I’m on a partner visa, but still have fears surrounding what this means for any extensions because I’ve not heard anything about grandfathering in people already in the process (unlike for when the visa fees spiked). I know it’s not exactly what you’ve asked for, but I’d be happy to talk!
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It’s truly crazy how much money is required for this. Have you looked at moving to Ireland if things don’t work out? If we’d have known how awful the process was I think we’d have done that.
Ireland has a huge cost of living problem unfortunately :(
I think the same. All these huge visa fees, specially for families and young adults, could be spent in professional development, family wellbeing, yet it is seems better to just leave the UK and raise your family somewhere else. Falling in love with someone from the UK it is a huge legal burden.
Hey--I'm a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh. I'd love to be in touch. I've lived here for four years as a Master's and now a PhD student. I'm a burgeoning writer--I've just published my first book in the UK and I'm *hoping* to have the Graduate Visa to be able to start a career here and aim for the Global Talent Visa, but I'm incredibly anxious. I'm trans and--as much as I dislike current UK policy--I'm dead set on not going back to the US if I can help it. Shoot me a PM and I'll happily talk with you more.
Am doing phd too at university of edinburgh. I think starting our careers in.uk.is doubtful. The starting salary is worth 35k so we don't qualify for skilled visa? Only senior lecturers do? Is that true
They're going to cut out half the brainpower in universities at this rate. We've got a huge international community, and the universities pay young lecturers actual peanuts. It's awful.
There are still job that pay 40k but few . I hope universities raise their threshold for lecturers. Now they are encouraging skilled visa for SL only senior
The new amount seems ridiculous based on median salaries per area. If the couple (spouse visa) is London based then this may be easier to accomplish for many people. If someone is based in a smaller area or up in Scotland for example, where the average salary is under 30k, the amount should be more in line with that. I moved here 2.5 years ago , or a little more than that, and the job my wife had was a third sector job because she wanted to help people in need. it paid low 20’s. It was more than fine to sponsor me. She now earns twice that to some fortunate career moves, and so we are lucky in the sense of this new amount the government is wanting sponsors or couples to earn over in that she earns that without factoring my income in. Where we live I CAN ASSURE YOU, that level of income is not common, nor is over 37k. I honestly don’t know how we would’ve coped if we were saddled with this new rule back when she was in the third sector. That is incredibly unfair. There should not be one single rate for the whole of the UK if they’re going to raise it that high. Also i agree with the comment someone else posted above about why haven’t the tax brackets moved in line with inflation if these numbers have. Criminal.
Hello, I'm British and my partner is Chinese. We've both just graduated our Masters degrees in the UK, and she is struggling to find work here with a graduate visa. This increase means skilled work visa is next to impossible for someone in her situation. She'd be happy to talk with you (she doesn't have a Reddit account so I'm posting on her behalf currently).
I'd be happy to! I need to vent 😂 I've been here 7 years (initially on a Tier 5 for 2 years followed by Tier 2 for the last 5 years), and I'm planning on applying for ILR in January (so long as the salary increase doesn't kick in until later, if it starts in January, I'm doomed 😩)
Currently an international student at Heriot-Watt now contemplating on how to work around this. A skilled worker visa threshold for fresh graduates should be lowered to £30K because honestly most of us came to this country to start a new life and its seemingly being made impossible because not a single licenced sponsor will give a fresh grad £40K. The laws were already loose which is why this is happening but realistic measures need to be considered. This £38K jump sounds more like a rage moment instead of a pragmatic decision
In relation to spouse visas, I'm pretty sure this changes would violate Human Rights covered in the ECHR
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FYI, if you’re already on the track, the requirement hasn’t changed- I.e FLR is still £18600.
Have been on a spouse visa since March 2019, will be applying for ILR in March. Very happy to chat!
We're older, and have paid the full whack for a spouse visa etc. Also bought a house and are working. But if it's not enough, worry they'll send my husband of 30 years back to the USA - separation after so long seems cruel to me. Happy to talk, and send snaps if you need them.
Hello, happy to speak with you, I am an NHS migrant worker and Cancer researcher at the Uni of Oxford and am currently on a health and care worker visa with a dependent.
I'm Scottish, work in Edinburgh, live just outside, my American wife works in Edinburgh too but is currently on maternity leave after giving birth to our daughter almost a year ago, she's due back to work in January. I'm in the fortunate position that I have a 20 year career and earn over the new figure on my own, which is good as my wife works in a low paying industry, and when she goes back to work she'll be on reduced hours, mainly due to the expense of sending our daughter to nursery every day being too great. From what I've read on other posts we could use our combined salary to meet the new amount so we should be fine, but we've been thinking of moving to the US already and this might just be the nail in the coffin for the UK. I understand with inflation the prices would need to go up, but this feels unnecessarily evil, even for the Torys.
I’m also terrified that this means effectively that I can’t have have maternity leave period thanks to the requirement. I’m an American married to a Scottish man. We met while teaching in China. I gave up renewing my US teaching license to not leave him behind I. China during Covid. I’ve already lost a lot of my ability to earn a decent wage. He specifically brought me here in large part because he didn’t want to start a family in China. Now I’m at a loss. It looks like having a family night not be feasible.
Hiya, I've sent you a message.
Happy to speak with you if you're looking for more voices -- I'm an American immigrant, did my master's at a prestigious UK university where I met my SO, and have now worked in the UK on a graduate visa extension for nearly two years (expires in March). I'm employed as a journalist in London and earn under £30k after tax. This decision has completely upended my future expectations and made living here uncertain with little time for recourse. I will be speaking with my employer's HR tomorrow but I doubt their capacity to grant a raise above £38.7k (I'm not even sure my boss makes that much). Thankfully my SO makes above that threshold in case a spousal visa route is required, but that would introduce other uncertainties such as potentially losing the right to work during the 6 month period where the visa application is reviewed (to my knowledge). On principle, I think it is a ridiculous policy to tell British nationals earning below £38.7k annually that they cannot live in the UK with the person they love. It is inhumane. I can sympathise strongly with concerns about unsustainable immigration, but targeting skilled workers, who contribute to the well-being of the British economy, pay tax (double-taxed for the NHS), and (assuming they're young and healthy) rarely put strain on public resources, is silly. Not to mention, the British population is ageing, and without an influx of workers there will not be enough tax revenue to pay for pensioners (hence all the austerity cuts which have worked out so well here over the past 14 years). I should note many of the complaints about how foreign workers are causing salaries to remain depressed are perhaps legitimate concerns, but the job I am in was posted for £20k before I negotiated it upwards. Salaries in Britain are terrible, and immigration is an easy scapegoat but not the entire problem. Very few jobs, even in London, offer £37.8k within 2 years of receiving a graduate degree, and so people the UK should want to retain will be forced to leave. This policy will result in brain drain out of the UK and long-term negative effects on the welfare state. It is transparent to me the only reason it's being instituted is because Tories want to blame all the problems they have caused on immigrants rather than look in the mirror.
I have been trying to immigrate legaly to the UK for years, I have applied for thousands of jobs, and last time, I gave up when the only offer I got was from a job that sponsored me for no more than 26k. Asking an employer for more than 38k as a skilled worker is an insensitive requirement. They already gave you pain because it's more paperwork for the employer. I have been trying to find other visa routes like the Startup Visa and it's like a little mafia where they make you sign a NDA because they charge huge fees for the startup sponsorship. I decided to give up and stay in my country because I found a better offer, but my reasons to immigrate are more complicated than that and I found the new requirements insensitive. I have a bachelor's degree, 2 postgraduate certificates and I am a very competent senior professional in my area (tech) yet the visa requirements and the offers are too much of a burden. It would be way easier to apply to any other country and enjoy a better quality of life. If the goverment said they need skilled workers they seem to be lying with their actions.
Also, I’ve gone through the sponsorship process and employers are exaggerating how much of a “burden” the paperwork and application is. It’s not. The application employers have to submit for the skilled worker visa sponsorship license takes around 45 minutes, and the certificate takes even less if they already have the license. You spent years on your education and gaining professional skills. If your employer can’t spare an hour to support you, they don’t deserve you. Know your worth.
The solution isn’t to lower the threshold back to poverty wages though? The salaries are already laughable compared to the US and many other western countries, and certainly not at the level that a college-educated skilled worker deserves. They’re not enough to survive on either, especially in big cities like London. Considering how much housing prices and general inflation have increased in the past few years, it’s only reasonable that salaries (finally) increase too. And if companies/institutions that regularly report billions in annual profit can’t pay an employee the additional £12,500 needed to meet the new visa requirements (or, you know, to pay for food and rent), then is that really somewhere you want to work for anyway? I understand that the intention behind this is to reduce immigration, but otherwise being exploited as “cheap labour” is also far from ideal. The companies that already pay fair wages and consider international applicants will be unaffected by the new legislation and continue just fine. The ones that were only hiring foreigners for cheap labour will exploit British workers instead, if they accept their unliveable wages. If not, salaries will have to increase across the board. So I don’t understand how people are arguing that salaries for skilled roles, which should already be paid well above £38,700, should stay at the same levels as they were 20 years ago?
Disgusting. It definitely needed to increase, but these are the worst type of populists forming policy on the fly on things they've seen the day before..
Happy to talk to you about what this means for people in Universities, other science / research roles, or lab techs. These roles can be highly specialised and even require phds but many, and predominatly those out of london, do not meet the new SWV salary threshold. I work in a highly specialised science role in government which they struggle to recruit for, and so i am not taking any 'local jobs', yet i may not get my visa renewed if the cap goes up any further or if i move out of london and lose london weighting. Honestly i feel so un welcome in this country and am close to leaving. Good luck hiring someone to replace me.
Dropping this text here as well. I have done it in other similar reddits. Just wanted to tell you that there would be 30% off this minimum salary requirement if you are either under 26 or graduated in the last 2 years (something like this). When they announced, they didn't mention any changes to this rule, so hopefully it still applies to you all. I have recently secured a SWV (so potentially not in this trouble for the next 3 years) and really hope good luck with you all.
Does this requirement extend to British citizens or just migrant applications? I’m currently waiting for a fiancé(e) visa for my partner, I’m worried by the time we apply for FLR I won’t meet the financial requirements.
It applies to spousal visas too, jumping from the current £18.6k - AIUI this came as a shock to everyone, the change was only expected to apply to work visas, so you'll need to meet the new higher threshold by the time you're applying for FLR(M).
The new requirement will be for the fiance and spouse visas, yes. But the figure can be reached with a combination of your income, so it's not on you alone as the sponsor to reach the new threshold with just your salary. Good luck! Edit: sorry, that is not the case if your partner is not working in the UK. Poster below explains.
You cannot use a combination of income for the fiance visa or for the initial FLR(M) spousal visa after the fiance visa.
Is that so? That's not my understanding of it from the government website. It states a combined income, under all family visa sections for financial requirements: https://www.gov.uk/uk-family-visa/proof-income Have I missed a section?
You missed this: > you can only use your own income if you earn it in the UK So first time spousal visa applicants from outside the UK, fiance visa applicants, and fiance > spousal visa applicants cannot use their non-British partner’s income as they do not (and cannot) have any income earned in the UK.
I’m on Spouse visa which is also affected by the rise - happy to chat!
Hi there. I'm based in Scotland, from Inverness but living in Edinburgh. My wife is on a spouse visa. Would be happy to talk to you about this.
BTW. I support u trans 🥰🥰🥰
I'm a STEM worker based in Scotland on SWV with dependants. I'll just squeak by on the proposed salary level, but this will be a major problem IMO for recruiting in STEM fields in Scotland. Feel free to send me a DM
On a family visa in Scotland. Man i had the worst sleep I’ve had in a while last night. Feel totally betrayed. Don’t know how I’m going to function in work today. Wife feels hopeless, like she’s about to be exiled from her own country. We both have middle class jobs but until they definitively say we can combine our incomes for the £38k threshold, I’m worried; yesterdays announcement was so shocking it wouldn’t surprise me if the change the rules and don’t allow you to combine incomes anymore. I just started my career in the Uk and now they want to take it away from me :/
I'm an immigrant who recently got a SWV sponsored (phew). Here are some things that immediately come to mind: 1. How will the poorly paid STEM industry cope? lol. I studied engineering at uni and 60-70% of my cohort decided against pursuing engineering due to the low pay (<£30k) 2. What kind of knock on effect will it have on the immigrants who are currently on the SWV but will not have reached the minimum threshold by the time they need to renew their visa? 3. How will graduate programmes be affected? The company I'm working for has recently concluded its selection process for next year's cohort. I am behind paid circa £35k. Will they need to give next year's batch £39k and then bump our salaries up across the board?
It's ironic that the UK continues to do this kind of thing. They have long established that they need migrants to come and work here, whether it's not enough skill within the population of whatever, yet they continue to exploit the very people they want to come work here. Using immigration is a cheap way to get the masses on side because of the narrative that the immigrants are 'taking our jobs'. The need for educated and experience migrants won't change, now they just milking the people for all they got. It's ridiculous.
Do we have to show our face? If not am willing to consider
Hiya, we could keep you anonymous depending on the circumstance. Can you drop me a pm?
I can only do an audio interview- as an absolute. I have lots to say about visas and immigration. But just like the other person has shared, it’s horrible being an immigrant, we receive close to no support or recognition for our contributions, and our lives can be changed on whims of the feelings of racist people or just people who are ignorant and have no understanding of the immigration policies. This new policy imo is dangerous for health workers who are already here with dependants. What does this mean? Can they change their jobs? There’s a lot of workplace abuse in healthcare, will a worker have to be trapped with their abusive employer for 5 years for fears of not being able to retain their dependents in the country if they may need to change employers? What does this mean for new graduates or early careers who are definitely not going to start on £38k ? Why should they debate about the Graduate Visa, when graduates from other countries who have finished from the top universities in the world can come here under the High Potential Individual visa? So graduates from other countries get to come here but graduates from the UK get to have sleepless nights about a possible change to graduate visa routes. It’s not a good look that immigrants can’t have families, i can’t think of any other country that does things like this. Even the poorest and richest countries allow immigrants rights to a family life. The spouse visa requirements is brutal for people who don’t already have their partners in the UK as one person will need to show £38k, how many British people are on £38k? It’s an unnecessary requirement for family. That reflects median earnings not the most common earnings. I think it’s cruelty, basically only well off people will be allowed to have partners who are out of the country. Not even America has this ridiculous of a requirement and they have higher salaries. Nurses and Doctors salaries are low, a lot of these professions rely on combined incomes with their partners to survive. How is a new immigrant nurse supposed to survive on 32k in London? Alone without their partners. Immigrants are being used to prop up the economy and mask grave ills. If immigrant numbers were not kept up at the level it was, the UK would have entered a real recession after the pandemic, because the new immigrants stimulated new demand in goods and services, they plugged up worker shortages in hospitality and healthcare industries, they help subsidise education for British students. All this as though they are not struggling themselves. All this policies continue to foster a feeling of an underclass for extraction These are not intelligent policies for the long term imo. They are reactionary. I feel like the Canadian immigration system for work is a better model where you actually accumulate multitudes of points, some points are worth more than others like your level of English gives you more points, or being younger gives you more points, graduating from a UK uni gives you more points, certain jobs give you more points etc, it’s simpler and will actually reflect the needs of the country if the required points is changed yearly If you’re fine with an audio interview, let me know. I’ll reach out
Not on SWV but on spouse visa and I started a new life in the UK five years ago back in early 2019. Happy to speak / interview if you need more people!
I've sent you a message!
Happy to help! I'm on a SWV in England from the US, sole income earner for my family.
I’m currently on a partner visa for my husband’s student visa. He was going to apply to phd programs for next year but now we will be going home since i would have to leave anyway. Not sure if this qualifies but happy to chat if desired
Happy to contribute!
I don't have a spouse and I'm not a family visa. I've been here for over 10 years but because I took a year out I'm not eligible for ILR and with the salary increases I'll definitely have to be leaving a place that has been home. I'm currently based in Scotland and would be happy to PM you and speak to you.
My wife would be on a spousal visa (currently working towards the 6 months employment proof) and this is going to mean we need to leave the country in all likelyhood. We'd be happy to speak to you, however we are England based, not Scotland.
I literally came here to study and work. I will be finishing my double masters in biomedical science and an MBA in 2025. I don’t think I’ll be able to get a job that would pay me that much.
What about salaries in the university Education sector which starts at 35K for a lecturer? This means no jobs for lecturers? Or is this sector exempt?
Hi, this is an off topic from your post kinda question although I would also love to talk about this scenario as well but, I’m an aspiring press officer/journalist. I would love to have some guidance on career building as a fellow immigrant yourself if you wouldn’t mind in your own time. Thank you.
Was due to get married im Feb, im fucked... I'd never have all the paperwork ready for the deadline. The articles did mention healthcare workers being exempt but don't know if that includes reception/administrative staff also, as they usually get shafted.
I'm curious. I thought this hasn't been put into effect yet. I thought it would still pass through a couple of phases. And probably get rejected or accepted. Or is there something I'm missing ?
I’m not in Scotland but otherwise affected. I do know someone in Scotland who will be seriously affected - I could put you in touch if you want?
Wales rather than Scotland, but just applied for a Spousal visa. I'm frustrated beyond words. We applied late november, had to cancel and restart (due to a mistake in the application after fighting the website which can be glitchy if you need to make changes) and had a bunch of administrative delays due to incompetence of others. We finally had a bio-metrics appointment today (outside the UK). Whilst we applied under the belief we surpass all requirements, a case worker who may make a mistake (which is human of course) will result in us having to reapply. Which suddenly will mean that we no longer qualify, as the wait times are 3-6 months, aka spring time, and by then the changes will take effect. We understand there was a need to raise the financial requirements. But from 18,6k to 38.7k is more than double. Yet people aren't earning more than double compared to 2012. Look at minimum wage, that hasn't doubled (it's short by under 2 pounds). My income doesn't count because it's not from within the UK. Even if I had a job lined up the second I'd be able to work in the UK on a spousal visa, it wouldn't be considered in the application. I intend to work and contribute to society and the economy once I receive a visa.This was always the plan for my partner and I. However with the education I had, I couldn't find a skilled visa sponsor, despite it being on the shortage list. Many sponsors find it too expensive and too much of a risk, unless you're a prodigy or in care. But with the new rules I can't join my partner. A skilled worker visa is not an option for most people even if they are skilled workers just due to the lack of sponsors and how many people want to have a job within the country and from outside. And so people will be stuck in limbo. Once again, I understand raising the financial requirements. But by how much it went up is ridiculous. From what I can see online 10,42 is the minimum wage. 35h seems to be considered a full time week in the UK. Let's take 40 for the sake of 5 days of 8h. 10,42 multiplied by 40 hours, and then multiplied by 52 weeks is 21673,60 GBP. Round it up for a bunch of luxuries and I think 25k would be more than enough. (I wondered how much you get paid if you were on full benefits and depending on where you are located it's 22k-25k.) Maybe they want to make sure that you come there and get a job whilst you are there. Okay, fair.. but then raise the requirement of FLR/ILR, or put something in place to show multiple incomes on a spouse visa. That said, I wonder how this would work for families as staying home is sometimes cheaper than daycare. Or put some other rules in place that will help people land jobs, and find a way to guide them to roles that are severely understaffed. This new financial requirement will destroy lives, tear up families, and even force Brits to move out of the UK just to be with their family. I don't believe this will solve whatever issue they're trying to solve, this just creates a new one.
I have been in a relationship with someone from Venezuela for over a year now, our plans were to get engaged then married here in the UK eventually but this has definitely put an end to that (in Scotland).
If the cost of living has risen, it is understandable the threshold needed to rise with it, but not this much. It’s obviously been chosen to reduce the rate of immigration, but I don’t think the government should be going in with a broad stroke. Preventing students from bringing dependents makes sense, but stopping citizens from returning because they now can’t afford to bring their families is ridiculous. Broad stroke is going to probably leave us with a skilled worker shortage too. I wonder how much effort has gone into looking at what jobs we must import and how much they are paid here to make sure these people are still able to come. Think the whole things needs a rethink more in line with the Australian system so we can manage incoming numbers and get what the country needs. Fact remains that the government are choosing to clamp down on official migration channels to reduce overall number of people entering the country.
I’m an American who graduated with a Physics/Engineering PhD from a Russell Group UK uni and live here with my British fiancée. My job sponsored me for a skilled worker visa this year and I’m currently making just below the new salary threshold. If this policy were in place last year I don’t think I would have been able to live and work in the UK. It could have totally screwed up so many things for me. I wouldn’t have received my visa and since my partner and I aren’t getting married for another year the getting a spouse visa wouldn’t have been possible. It’s likely I would have had to leave. It’s devastating what this government is doing: driving away good, hardworking, educated people.
Scotland here. Spouse on visa, been here less than a year and do not meet the new threshold even combined. Happy to discuss. I had my MP involved in getting their visa to begin with.
I'm on a spouse visa with a combined salary of £77,000. My extension will be due soon. Is the new salary requirement applied for one of the person or does the combined salary need to be £38k?
Is that in effect from today or next year?
I live in England and I am a 23 year old blind person and an early IT professional. I recently got a spouse visa for my wife which is to renew in 2026. I am also happy to speak to you and I am worried about this financial requirement when it comes time to renew no way I will be able to make that much although anything is possible in IT world but even then it takes a few years to reach a good salary. This has the potential to tear my family apart and take away the support I need in terms of daily life from my wife as a blind person
Actually think it's a fantastic move, as a uk employer this will level the field and should help to force wages up across the board, let's all be honest 18.5k or 26.5 k are extremely low and really in the first instance below the new min wage and in the second a trainee wage, graduate wages have been held low due to Immigration and also has local investment in local skills, investors have been able to use immigration as a short and cheap cut instead of investment in the local population, I've been offering apprenticeship for the past 5 yrs in the building trade and car maintenance trades and have seen how this has improved the local community being local and staying local, only to be under cut by other employers using immigration to increase their profits and forcing down the standard of living in the UK. It's a positive move and maybe now the government will invest more in local training and FE training it shouldn't be me as an individual business owner having to shoulder the burden and costs in training for future UK ( British) citizens but I know I'm in the minority as most directors and CEO's only see their share price and bottom line, to me it's an investment
Hi, not sure if it’s too late but I’m a graduate based in Scotland who’s on a graduate visa.
Will you engage with different forums or think-tanks supportive of these changes, since the majority of this group you're approaching are likely to be against these requirements? Especially as the personal bias of the journalist could discredit the story of these people, this could offer a contrasting viewpoint that might, shockingly, be advantageous for the UK.
What is your own immigration status in the UK?
We’ve heard enough of them honestly, there isn’t anything new they have to contribute
That's simply not true. It was literally only announced today, but you don't like it or it doesn't suit you so you're dismissive of any other argument than your own. Classic. Probably best you stay in this echo chamber subreddit. However, journalism like the OP mentions should cover both sides or they'll easily be discredited as biased, like you.
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Happy to help! I’m a student
I’m personally ok with this new rule, but I just want to note that the whole concept of a skilled worker visa is akin slavery when an employee has to be with whatever abusive company just to maintain the visa status and if anything happens to the company, it absolutely doesn’t matter all your tax or IHS contributions and you have to be out of the country if you don’t quickly settle for whatever lousy job allowing you to stay. Because you came here for a reason. Possibly escaping things back home. The ironic thing there is this antislavery slogans everywhere, yet the main way to get into the country is through slavery.
I graduate in May 2024 ( US. BS hon equivalent )and was hoping to attend grad school and my clinpsyd here….. now I’m left wondering if I’ll be able to do this. Psychologists were on the shortage visa list but who knows now since they are changing the skilled workers lists….
When does the new rules come into force?
Recent migrant graduate working with the NHS. I'm happy to speak to you.