The Point Based Immigration System in UK

With the Brexit vote, it has been proposed that an Australian style system which is based on points, should be applied for all the migrant workers employed within UK. But UK’s immigration system is also points centric, so how is it different from the other points based immigrant visa system of other countries? Let us first look at the immigration statistics: a high estimated number of 630,000 immigrants have been recorded to enter the UK in the year 2015 to stay longer than a year – of these 83,000 were British citizens and an estimated total of 270,000 were from other parts of the EU. The information on the originating country of the immigrants is not provided by the Office for National Statistics, who only gives information on the region that they came from. Separately, according to the reports of National insurance we get a list of top five countries from where highest number of people registered to work in the UK. These top 5 countries contributing to the immigrant worker population of UK are Romania, Poland, Italy, Spain and Bulgaria. Additionally, statistics are also available which identified the top countries –other than the EU nationals for which were issued entry visas in the same year. These countries include India, China, United States, Pakistan and Australia in no particular order.

Lets us look at the UK’s point based system in a snapshot:

United Kingdoms’ first points based immigration system was introduced by the Labour Government in the February of the year 2008. It was heralded by the ministers as being built by taking the Australian point based system as a basis. Prior to this the immigration system was based on a labyrinth scheme which had a provision to grant 80 different kinds of visas. The point based system has a long list of sub tiers of migrant categories of visas but majorly, the system is classified into five broad tiers or categories. Out of the four tiers, Tier 3 was meant for the entry of unskilled immigrants to the UK. But since the British Government decided that there is no further requirement of the unskilled immigrants to come to UK from outside of EU, this particular visa category became redundant. It has been taken off the list, under the coalition while the others have been tweaked. Now, the remaining four tiers and their classification is as follows:

Tier 1 or the high value visa: this is mainly meant to provide a pathway to the highly talented and skilled, high net worth investors and entrepreneurs.

Tier 2 or the skilled worker visa: this is to facilitate the entry of skilled workforce due to vacancies that the UK or the EEA workers, Ministers of religion, intra-company transfers or sportspersons are unable to fill. These have a ceiling cap of 20,700 a year or else the immigrant worker should be earning more than £150,000.

Tier 4 or the student visa for students wanting to pursue their primary, secondary or tertiary education in the UK.

Tier 5 visa is meant for the temporary immigrants.

Each tier has a specific definition and a list of certain attributes which can also be referred to as qualifying criteria. Points are allocated by the tier on completion of each of these specific attributes. For instance in Tier 1, each of the groups mentioned, an applying individual can earn points according to diverse criteria like, English language ability, capacity to support oneself financially and age and previous experience.

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