On 16 Oct 2014, the Home Office published a new Statement of Changes, which will have a significant impact on the current immigration rules as explained in the paragraphs below.<\/p>\n
As of 20 October 2014, the appeal\u2019s procedure for Tier 4 applications, which have been refused in country, will be simplified as appellants will only be allowed to submit an administrative review.\u00a0\u00a0This means that the applicants will need to file a written request to the Home Office to review the decision. If one can shown that the caseworker made an error, the decision will be corrected within 28 days instead of the standard 12 weeks for a postal application.<\/p>\n
Significantly, as of 6 November 2014, the minimum investment threshold for the Tier 1 (Investor) route will be raised from \u00a31 million to \u00a32 million. The type of investments will also be restricted to UK Government bonds, share capital or loan capital in active and trading UK registered companies.<\/p>\n
As a result, investments made into cash deposits or towards the unmortgage part of a property up to a maximum of \u00a3250000 will no longer be counted. In addition,\u00a0the loan route whereby a Tier 1 investor could rely on cash funds in the form a loan from a UK financial institution will no longer be an option.<\/p>\n
However, on the plus side, the investor will no longer be required to \u201ctop-up\u201d the balance if the value of the shares or bonds were to fall.<\/p>\n
Finally, Tier 2 (Intra-Company Transfer) and Tier 2 (General) applicants will be subjected to a genuine vacancy assessment. This empowers ECO and caseworkers to refuse applications where there are reasonable grounds to believe that (1) the job described by the sponsor does not genuinely exist or (2) the applicant is not qualified to do the job.<\/p>\n