UK gives relief to HSMP migrants

In what may sound as music to the ears of highly-skilled Indian migrants, Britain has decided to allow such professionals to stay as it works to implement a high court ruling against immigration rule changes with retrospective effect that could have forced them to leave.The Home Office will not appeal against an April 8 High Court verdict that said it was ''not open to the government to alter the terms and conditions'' of Highly Skilled Migrants Programme (HSMP) under which thousands of highly skilled employees, mostly Indians, came to Britain.All highly-skilled migrants who came here under the HSMP scheme as on November 7, 2006, when the regulation changes were made, can stay until processes are put in place to implement the judgement, the Home Office said.Some 49,000 highly-skilled people had come to Britain under the HSMP initiated in January 2002 and most of them were facing the prospect of returning home following changes in the immigrations rules brought into force by the government.The HSMP Forum, representing the highly-skilled professionals, successfully challenged the changes and won a landmark case last week.''We are happy to take the judge's decision as final and do not intend to waste taxpayers money with an appeal,'' Lin Homer, Chief Executive of the Border and Immigration Agency, said in a communication to the HSMP Forum's Executive Director Amit Kapadia.''We are now urgently considering how to give effect to the judgement and will let you know the details as soon as we can,'' he said.
Press Trust of India
Friday, April 18, 2008 (London)
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