Anand Kumar, an Indian physiotherapist who has lived in the U.K. for the past eight years launched a petition on the British parliament website this week calling for the government to exempt staff from a requirement introduced last year that means that non-E.U. workers must earn at least £35,000 pounds a year in order to gain permanent residency in the U.K. His petition and situation highlight the impact that Britain’s toughening immigration stance has had had on Indian workers in the U.K., and particularly in the public sector, where pay levels remain subdued.
Since April 2016, non-E.U. citizens wishing to apply for permanent residency in the U.K. must earn £35,000, or be forced to leave. “I find this rule discriminates unfairly against those who chose to work in the NHS, where such a salary is impossible within the first five years of employment,” reads Mr. Kumar’s petition. Mr. Kumar, who came to the U.K. to do his Masters at Sheffield Hallam University in 2009 has stayed on to work in the NHS since then, working at a hospital in the city of Birmingham. While additional hours he does each week takes his salary over the £35,000 threshold, his contracted salary remains considerably below that level and it is this figure that matters: under current government rules additional hours, bonus and incentive payments do not count towards that minimum level. If his salary does not reach the threshold levels, he would ineligible to remain in the U.K. when his deadline for applying for permanent residency — or leaving the U.K. — comes up in two years time. “I came to this country with two bags and now have a house, I have built up a life,” said Mr. Kumar, who works in a trauma and orthopaedic department. He believes that there are many in the health care sector caught between nurses and radiologists, and A&E doctors — who because of being put on the shortage occupation list are exempted from the threshold, and higher earning professionals. “They want us to come and earn and go back, which I think is depressing for all of us,” he says, adding that the rules had been quite different when he arrived in 2009.
The issue of the £35,000 threshold hit a nerve when it was first implemented last year: a petition calling on the government to scrap it because it discriminates against low earners attracted over 114,000 signatures, triggering a parliamentary debate on the topic. Responding at the time the government said the threshold was part of its overall strategy of meeting the government’s target of reducing net migration to sustainable levels. “The strongest indicator of economic value is salary, and therefore those migrants earning more than a given amount at the end of their temporary leave in the U.K. should be eligible for settlement,” the government said in its response at the time.
Harsev Bains of the Indian Workers Association in the U.K. said they had come across many Indians, who had worked in the NHS and across the public services in the U.K., who had found themselves faced with no choice but to leave the U.K. as their salary failed to meet the permanent residency threshold. “The NHS is in crisis with a shortage of skilled people, we should be keeping the resources we’ve developed and skilled over the years to help and support the NHS.”
In late 2016, the government has also raised the amount that workers must earn to qualify for the Tier 2 work visa to £25,000, with a few exemptions including nurses and secondary school teachers of mathematics. It will rise further to £30,000 in April.
Launched by Downing Street in 2006, the parliamentary e-petition service enables members of the public to launch appeals, and has become a popular way for people to attempt to change policy or highlight issues. If they reach a certain threshold they trigger a government response (over 10,000 signatures) or a parliamentary debate (over 100,000).
Responding to a request from this newspaper to Mr. Kumar’s petition, the Home Office said: “It has been to easy for some businesses to bring in workers from overseas rather than take long term decisions to train our workforce at home, these reforms ensure businesses are able to attract skilled migrants while also prioritising the recruiting and training of U.K. workers.”
