UK Investor Visa Auction: A Step Closer?

UK Investor Visa Auction: A Step Closer?

The UK Government’s immigration advisers have pushed forward the idea that a limited number of visas for the country could be sold to the highest bidders. (See our article, UK Investor Visas: Changes on the Way, 27 Jan 2014.) The visas would almost certainly lead to the holder being granted a UK passport.

The advisers have suggested that wealthy foreigners should be given the chance to bid for one of 100 “Premium” visas each year. The starting price for each visa would be £2m, plus a further half a million as a donation to a fund for “good causes”. The fund would benefit education and health care in the UK, as well as charitable organisations. Successful premium bidders would receive the right to settle permanently in the UK in just two years instead of the present five years; and would need to spend only 90 days a year in the country to qualify instead of the current180 days.

Those wishing to obtain a “Premium” Visa would be asked to make a sealed bid of at least £2.5m. As it is proposed that there be only 100 visas issued annually, it is likely that to be successful applicants would have to bid more than this. Under the current system, between January and September 2013 (the latest period for which there are figures), there were just under 600 applications for Investor, or Tier 1, Visas. The Premium Visa, though, would cost £2m, and anything bid in excess of this would also go into the fund for “good causes” to be distributed among schools, hospitals and charities.

There is currently no limit on the number of Tier 1 Visas which can be issued in a year; but many have complained that the existing system brings little or no long-term benefit to the UK. In order to obtain the Visa, High Net Worth Individuals (HNWIs) must invest between £1m and £10m in gilts. But they can sell these gilts on after three or five years – the individual ends up with UK citizenship, but the UK Treasury has received no real benefit.

The proposed scheme is undoubtedly controversial. Some people are horrified at the prospect of the UK selling visas to the highest bidders in an auction. But Professor Sir David Metcalf, chairman of the Migration Advisory Committee, defends the policy: “It is better than giving them away, which is what we are doing now. At the moment the Brits get very little out of this and the investors get an awful lot.”

When put that way, even the most hardened British nationalist may regard the new scheme as worth trying, although ministers have yet to be convinced.

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