Immigration Monthly Update – September 2022

Change of Home Secretary

Following the appointment of the new Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Elizabeth Truss MP, in the United Kingdom on 6 September 2022, there have been cabinet changes, including the appointment of a new Home Secretary – the Rt Hon Suella Braverman KC MP (moving from her previous role as Attorney General)

Braverman holds herself out as a barrister specialising in immigration law, this is therefore an interesting appointment that may see a new approach to leadership and policy making in the Home Office. Following Braverman’s brief leadership campaign, we know that she is fully committed to the previous Home Secretary, Priti Patel’s controversial Rwanda policy and Braverman has since revealed to the Home Office her ‘No boats crossing the Channel’ target. Braverman strongly opposes entry by asylum seekers without permission, The Times report that she is an advocate for greater use of immigration detention and restrictions of asylum support in some form. We also know that Braverman wants to withdraw from the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) as she believes that the ECHR is ‘thwarting’ the Government’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.

Although her appointment is very new and her policies as Home Secretary have not been confirmed, it is somewhat evident already that Braverman may be more focused on further hard-line policy changes, targeting illegal migration but we are yet to understand her position on legal migration routes and visas for business and workers.

Changes in Right to Work checks

A reminder that the current COVID concessions businesses have been using to enable them to undertake remote Right to Work checks for employees and new joiners, come to an end on 30 September 2022. From 1 October, businesses must revert to a physical check of documents for British/Irish nationals or alternatively, to retain capability for virtual checks, they must instead engage with a Government approved IDSP technology provider. Any remote checks undertaken from 1October, not using an official IDSP technology, will mean the employer does not benefit from statutory protection for illegal working.

It has been reported that in a survey of 500 businesses, shockingly 75% wrongly believed they could use a UK driving licence as proof of right to work and almost half indicated not being prepared for the changes coming into effect from 1 October, furthermore 78% of executives surveyed were not aware that (in the worst instances of non-compliance) they could face imprisonment if checks were not compliant and illegal workers identified. Get in touch with the Birketts Immigration team if you need help preparing for these changes.

Visa processing times

The Home Office are continuing to process visa applications as usual, subject to delays as a result of the UKVI’s prioritisation of Ukrainian Family Scheme Applications.

The Home Office have updated their processing times for applications submitted outside of the UK:

Work visas: an average of 4 weeks

Visit visas: an average of 7 weeks

Student visas: an average of 3 weeks

Family visas: an average of 24 weeks

However, the visa processing times for both in country and out of country applications are continuing to experience disruptions due to the Home Office reallocating resources to the Ukraine visa scheme.

In our experience, these processing times are taking much longer than advised – with skilled worker and PBS dependent visa applications taking more than 12 weeks to process on many occasions.

Reinstatement of priority services

As a reminder, the Home Office have reinstated priority processing options for out of country work visa applications on 12 August. This is welcome news for employers and applicants as processing times via the ‘priority’ service are reduced to 5 days instead of several weeks.

However, in our experience, we are seeing the option of priority services appear only for EU nationals who have used the IDV (Identity Verification) app and priority services have not been consistently available for Non-EU nationals. This differentiation however has not been confirmed by the Home Office so should be considered anecdotally.

Priority options will only be available to new application submissions and it is not possible to upgrade an application that is already under consideration. Applicants could withdraw and re-submit if they wanted to use the priority options.

Priority services for new family visa applications and PBS dependent applications continue to be suspended and processing times extensive at circa 24 weeks.

For more information on the topics discussed in this article, please contact Sacha Wooldridge.