A number of changes to this hitherto underused category are likely to make it far more attractive to universities and senior academics from overseas whom they wish to employ.
Any individual who is made a job offer for a Professor, Associate Professor or Reader position in any UK HEI, or equivalent positions at a UK research institute, will qualify automatically for a Tier 1 (Exceptional Talent) endorsement from the Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering or the British Academy, as appropriate. An accelerated endorsement process will also be applied to individuals qualifying under these provisions.
Additionally, those who are granted leave under this category following an endorsement for their 'exceptional talent' (rather than 'exceptional promise') will now qualify for indefinite leave to remain after three years instead of the usual five.
Other changes affecting academics have been introduced to the Tier 2 (General) category, whereby the exemption from the Resident Labour Market Test ('RLMT') that applies for supernumerary research positions has changed. Now, to qualify for this RLMT exemption, the applicant must have been granted a scientific research award or fellowship by either:
The exemption will continue to apply after the relevant third party funding has ended, as long as the applicant is being sponsored to continue to undertake the same research.
There is also a new exemption from the RLMT where a job offer is to continue working as a member of an existing research team and:
Another important change to note relating to the RLMT is that where an exemption other than the Shortage Occupation List or post-study work provisions applies, the full reasons for the exemption must be included on the Certificate of Sponsorship.
HEIs which hold Tier 4 (General) sponsor status may now sponsor Tier 4 (General) students to undertake part-time study in certain circumstances. Those students will be subject to additional restrictions, including a restriction on undertaking any paid or unpaid work in the UK.
Away from the changes contained in the Immigration Rules, the Home Office have announced that it is extending a pilot programme permitting master's students sponsored by certain institutions to benefit from streamlined document submission requirements and to be granted leave for up to six months after their course has finished, instead of the usual four. The pilot scheme has been extended from the four originally selected institutions to a further 19 and will apply for those institutions' 2018/19 intake.
On the whole, the above changes can probably be described as very positive for HEIs. However, changes have been made to the way in which absences from the UK are calculated for the purposes of indefinite leave to remain ('ILR') applications, which are expected to have rather worrying implications for migrant workers and their family members. In particular these changes affect the requirement that applicants for ILR should not spend more than 180 days out of the country during each year of the qualifying period (usually five years).
The first change is the way in which those absences are calculated. Previously, the rules provided for the absences to be calculated by counting back 12 months from the date the ILR application is submitted, then look at the 12-month period preceding that, and so on back to the beginning of the qualifying period. Now, the absences will be calculated by looking to see whether the 180-day limit is exceeded in any 12-month period during the qualifying period. This means that an applicant who had a continuous absence of, say, nine months which previously would have been considered to fall within two separate years for the purposes of their ILR application, would now be considered not to meet the requirements of the Rules. This Rule change is to be applied retrospectively to all ILR applications, so academics with extensive travel who carefully planned periods of absence from the UK around the previous rules might be caught out by this change.
The second change is that dependant family members of Points-Based System migrants will now also be subject to the same limit on absences as the principal applicant. Previously, no limit on absences was applied to dependants, so some family members who were granted leave as a dependant but decided to spend the majority of their time overseas (eg for work or family reasons) may now find that they are ineligible for ILR. This requirement is to be applied to all periods of leave granted as a dependant after 11 January 2018.