My previous found a very big response from the habra community, so I decided to publish here another article about emigration, which I previously published on .
I have been living in the UK for over two years. Initially, I moved here on a work visa, which imposes certain restrictions on the holder: you can only work for the company that invited you, and in order to get a permanent residence permit, you need to live on a work visa for five years. Since I like the country in general, I decided to try to improve my immigration status faster and get a “talent visa” (). In my opinion, this visa is the best British visa, which, oddly enough, not all people who are considering moving here know about.
In this article, I will share my personal experience of obtaining such a visa. Just in case, I am not an immigration advisor and this article is not a guide to action. If you decide to apply for a talent visa and have any questions, please contact and qualified lawyers.
The Talent Visa allows you to live in the UK, work for any employer, be the head of an organisation, run a business, be self-employed or not work at all. In addition, the visa allows you to obtain permanent residence in the UK after three years, and not after five, as with a regular work visa. The accelerated obtaining of a permanent residence permit is important for me for another reason. After moving to the UK, my daughter was born, and children born on British soil have the right to obtain local citizenship, provided that one of the parents has a permanent residence permit.
The talent visa is not for everyone. As its name implies, you need to be able to confirm your merits in one of the professions that are suitable for this visa.
The full list is on the website of the British government, at the time of writing it includes the following areas of activity:
- Natural Sciences
- Engineering
- Humanitarian sciences
- Medicine
- Digital technology
- Art
- Fashion
- Architecture
- Film and TV
The main disadvantage of a visa is that it is quite difficult to obtain. This is due to the fact that the number of issued visas is not more than 2 per year for all professions. As a result, for each profession there are 000-200 visas per year, which is quite a bit. Compare this with, for example, regular work visas, which are issued by almost 400 per year. Nevertheless, as my experience shows, it is quite possible to get one. Next, I will tell my experience of getting it.
This plastic card is the visa. It is also called here Biometric Residence Permit (BRP).
UK Talent Visa Process
The process is fully described in . I will briefly retell it from the point of view of my experience.
The process of obtaining a visa is two-step. In the first step, you need to get support from the organization assigned to your field of activity, in the second step, you can already apply for the visa itself.
Step 1. Get approval
Since my main profession is a software developer, I applied for a visa as a specialist in the field of digital technologies, so I will tell the process for this profession. For other professions, the process may be slightly different.
In the case of digital technologies, the organization that evaluates your talents is .
The process is best started by learning from the Tech Nation UK website.
In general, in order to receive support from Tech Nation UK, one had to demonstrate one of the 2 key criteria and two of the four qualifying criteria.
Key criteria (need to demonstrate one of the two)
- Proven experience in creating innovative digital solutions.
- Evidence of your recognition in the digital field outside of your day job.
Qualification criteria (must demonstrate two out of four)
- Demonstrate that you have seriously advanced the digital technology industry
- Demonstrate that you are recognized as a digital leader. Unlike the 2nd key criterion, there is no requirement that it must be outside the place of work.
- Demonstrate that you are constantly learning new technologies and gaining new digital experiences
- Prove your exceptional ability in the field by demonstrating your contributions through published scientific publications.
If you do not meet these criteria, then you can apply for a visa as an “promising” (“exceptional promise”), the criteria for them is a little simpler. They can be found in the brochure on the Tech Nation UK website. The Exceptional Promise visa is different in that it can be applied for permanent residence after 5 years, and not after 3 years.
In order to demonstrate your skills you need to collect up to 10 pieces of evidence.
Evidence can be anything - letters from employers, published articles, recommendations from former colleagues, your github page, etc. In my case, I demonstrated:
- , published on Habré
- Letters from organizations where I have taught courses on big data and machine learning
- Several letters of recommendation from past jobs and former colleagues
- Letter from the university about my studies there
- Ordinary certificate from the current place of work
- Letter from a student for whom I was supervisor at the University of Edinburgh
They also needed two (three are now required) letters of recommendation from high-level managers in serious organizations. It is desirable that the organizations be international, but, as practice has shown, respected Russian organizations are also suitable. I managed to get several letters that matched this criterion, and in the end I attached one letter of recommendation from a person who held a high position in Yandex, and another from a person from Tinkoff Bank.
In addition to the set of documents to be submitted, please attach your CV and a cover letter explaining why you have decided to apply for this visa and why you think you are qualified to receive it. It is rather strange for a person who grew up in Russia to write such a letter, since in our culture it is somehow not customary to praise oneself.
In my case, collecting all the documents took a couple of months, mainly due to the fact that it was necessary to contact a large number of people and organizations, some of which turned out to be quite slow.
After that, I uploaded all the documents to the Tech Nation UK website, filled out the visa application form on the Home Office (British Migration Service) website, paid the first step visa fee and started waiting for a decision from Tech Nation UK.
About a month and a half later I received an email that my profile meets the criteria of Tech Nation UK and they support my application for a talent visa.
Step 2. Apply for a visa
Once you have been approved in step 1, you can apply for a visa. This step is simple and not much different from applying for other visas. In fact, it turned out to be even easier than applying for a Schengen visa, for example, since all you need to have is the letter of support from step one. Failure in the second step is not very likely if you are a good citizen, do not participate in terrorist activities and have not violated British laws.
Unlike many other UK visas, you don't even need to take an English exam to get a talent visa.
My family and I filled out an online application, paid the visa and medical fees, traveled to our neighboring city of Glasgow to submit our biometric data, and began to wait. A little more than 8 weeks later, we received visas in the mail.
When applying from outside the UK, the process will be faster, three weeks instead of eight. Also in this case, the visa itself, which is a plastic card of standard sizes, you will receive already in Britain. A short-stay visa for one month will be glued to your passport. Another difference when applying from Russia is that you will need to take a tuberculosis test, as Russia is on the list of countries where the situation with tuberculosis is not very good.
You can apply for a visa for up to 5 years if you apply within the UK, and up to 5 years and 4 months if you apply from outside the UK.
Price
The most unpleasant moment in the whole story with a visa is its price. All prices and conversion into rubles are current as of December 2019.
The first step in which you apply for approval from Tech Nation UK (or another organization) costs 456 pounds (about 38 rubles). If you have been approved by Tech Nation UK, the cost of a visa for the second stage will cost 000 pounds (152 rubles). For each member of your family, you will have to pay an additional 12 pounds at this stage (500 rubles). In addition, you need to pay a medical fee of 608 pounds (50 rubles) per person per year.
In total, if you apply for a 5-year visa, you will get 2 pounds (608 rubles). For a family of 215, 000 pounds (4 rubles) will come out. It's not cheap, but the bulk of the cost goes to the medical fee that must be paid for any British immigrant visa. In return, you are given the opportunity to receive medical services in the UK, the quality of which is considered one of the best in the world ().
| Issuance of a 5-year visa for one person | Issuance of a 3-year visa for one person | Registration of a 5-year visa for 4 people. | Registration of a 3-year visa for 4 people. | |
| 1 phase | 456 | 456 | 456 | 456 |
| 2 phase | 152 | 152 | 1976 | 1976 |
| medical fee | 2000 | 1200 | 8000 | 4800 |
| Total | 2608 | 1808 | 10432 | 7232 |
The cost of obtaining a talent visa. All amounts are in pounds sterling. If you need to take a tuberculosis test, you will have to pay for it separately.
After obtaining a visa
The visa allows you and your family members to live in the UK. You can not work as a doctor, athlete and sports coach. You may not even work at all, but later, when you extend your visa or apply for a residence permit, you will need to demonstrate that you had earnings in your professional field.
After 3 (or 5 under the Exceptional Promise visa) years of life, you can apply for a permanent residence permit. If, like me, you switch to this visa from a work visa, then the time you lived on the previous visa counts towards the length of your stay. When applying for a residence permit, you will need to demonstrate income in your professional field, pass an English language test and a test on knowledge of history and life in the UK.
If you have any questions about my talent visa experience, feel free to ask them in the comments 🙂
Source: habr.com