Immigration Law Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words

Immigration Law - Essay Example Since, the rebuilding of modern UK results in a huge demand of skilled labor from outside countries; Britain largely remained a country of net emigration until the 1990s. The government's latest population projections, published in October 2009, have an annual net immigration of 180,000 (BBC 2009). Successive governments from the early 1970 itself, operated tight controls on immigration in an effort to curb immigration from New Commonwealth countries. In the past decade UK has mostly put effort on enhancing the skill level of the workforce within the country that supports the interdependent aspirations of a competitive and productive economy in global market. Finally, government took step towards initiating the Points Based System in order to create a unified selection system. As a result, points based system has now occupied central part of the UK Government's five year strategy for asylum and immigration (MAC 2009).Point Based System and Its Procedure The UK Points Based system is based on a five tier framework: Tier 1: Highly skilled migrants, entrepreneurs, investors and graduate students. Tier 2: Skilled workers with a job offer; this tier replaced the work permit rules. Tier 3: Low skilled workers – restricted to those needed to fill temporary shortages. Tier 4: Students. Tier 5: Youth mobility and other mainly unpaid temporary workers such as interns (Murray 2011). The five tiers were brought in action in between February 2008 and March 2009. Tiers 1 and 2 can lead to permanent settlement. Migrants in Tiers 1, 2 and 4 can potentially switch between one another. Tiers 3 and 5 are temporary routes and migrants cannot move out of these tiers once they are in the UK. Dependants are allowed to come to the United Kingdom with the main applicant, but they are not allowed to work if they accompany a student under Tier 4 or a temporary worker under Tier 5, who has less than 12 month’s leave to remain in the country. An employer or educational instit ution issues a certificate of sponsorship to the migrant they have chosen; the migrant can then make an application for clearance through the points test and will receive more points if their sponsor is ‘A’ rated and less if it is ‘B’ rated. Tier 1 applicants do not require a job offer so therefore do not need a certificate of sponsorship. Points are awarded differently in each tier. The government introduced several categories for Tier 1: an applicant under the ‘entrepreneurs’ category must hold at least ?200,000 of disposable capital in a regulated financial institution; under the investors category they must hold at least ?1 million of disposable funds; applicants under the ‘graduate students’ category must have a qualification from a UK institution; under the general highly skilled category an applicant is awarded points based on a range of factors including age, qualifications, work experience or education in the UK, and previ ous earnings. There are five routes of entry under Tier 2: Shortage occupation for skilled people coming to the UK for a specific vacancy that cannot be filled by a British. Resident labour market test for jobs that cannot be filled through the other Tier 2 routes. The employer (sponsor) needs to show that there is no suitably qualified worker from the UK. Intra-company transfer for established employees of multinational companies who are being transferred to a skilled job in a UK-based branch of the