Making the most of the immigration rules – tips for international students

Last month the government announced the intention to overhaul the immigration rules and make the path to settlement and British citizenship a longer journey for most. It will also be more difficult for employers to sponsor a worker and the duration of a graduate visa will be refused.

Some international students may now rush to take advantage of the graduate route which is now available for 2 years for most graduates and for 3 years for PhD graduates.

Yet, other students may prefer to skip the graduate route altogether and go for sponsored employment directly, switching from the student route into the skilled worker route.

Although this may mean forfeiting your chance of the graduate visa, you may have a better chance of getting a sponsored position now and have more benefit from it in the long term.

The employers also have an additional incentive of offering sponsorship to students in that they don’t have to pay the immigration skills charge when sponsoring students.

The immigration skills charge is currently £364 per year of sponsorship for small organisations or £1000 per year of sponsorship for larger companies. The government promised to raise these figures considerably as part of the reform. For now, employers do not have to pay these fees when sponsoring a student who has successfully completed the course, but will have to pay the fees if sponsoring someone with a graduate visa or someone who changes employment or switching from another immigration route.

The skilled worker option has yet another benefit at the moment as it leads to settlement after 5 years of sponsored work. We expect that all those who successfully applied for a skilled worker visa prior to the introduction of the reform will keep their entitlement to settle after 5 years. Those who switch into the skilled worker route after the changes are made may have to wait longer for entitlement to settle.

For now, it is not clear how the proposed longer path to settlement will pan out in practice. It might be possible that you will be given credit for the time spent in the UK as a student – in which case it won’t be very different from the long residence rule as it is now. We don’t really know the details to speculate much on what is to come.

If you are unable to get an offer of sponsorship before expiry of your student visa, graduate immigration route remains an attractive option. Most likely you will not be affected by the proposed reduction of time on the graduate route, as the government generally respects any legitimate expectation associated with this or that type of visa.

For example, at the time when you enrolled with a UK university as an international student, you had the expectation that your would be given permission to work for 2 years on completion of studies. We expect that transitional arrangements will address this and those who will graduate after the reform will still have the right to stay for an extra 2 or 3 years.

For those who came to the UK to study with a view to settle more permanently, it should be mentioned that the student visa is not an official route to settlement and there will be no recognition of any expectation in this regard. The long residence rule which allows people to settle in the UK after 10 years of continuous lawful residence in a variety of immigration categories is not seen as a route to settlement, but rather as a concession which may be varied at any time. However, the rule was significantly modified in 2024 and we hope that it will not be changed in the foreseeable future. So if you are studying in the UK continuously for 10 years you may be eligible to apply for ILR on the basis of long residence.

In summary, my tip number 1 is to go for the skilled worker route if this is on offer. Remember that the employers are equally keen to hire you now rather than later.

The second best is the graduate route which is still available and is not taken away from you.

And finally, long residence rule allows students who completed their schooling from undergraduate degree to PhD level with addition of the graduate route to settle in the UK after 10 years of continuous residence.  We expect this will remain unchanged.