a little browsing on skilledworkersUK subreddit tells you that people's lives are upended for no reason. it's hard to imagine anyone who's not limited by family or relationships is not gonna leave. "I'm going home, so I guess the reform voters won".

The 10 year penalty for claiming benefits expires if you don’t claim benefits for 5 years. So you could still qualify in 10 years not 20.

For people on family visas and work visa dependants, the salary threshold can be met with a combined income of £25,142 for a couple (in practice this duplicates the MIR for family visa holders.) Also UK ancestry visa holders qualify in 5 years not 10.

Also, auxiliary nurses now exempt from the new rules. It was only going to be care workers, but the NHS recruited a lot of people in this occupation.

The only good news today is the lower salary threshold expiry date has been extended from April 2030 to April 2035. So the policy is nasty, but not forced remigration. That being said, this could change with a change of government.

Long thread alert 🧵 1. Sponsor licence revocations have not hit all work visa holders equally. Care workers, medium-skilled workers and those recruited from abroad have been far more affected than graduate-level workers. We map out who has borne the brunt.

New: The unequal impact of the increase in sponsor licence revocations — by James Bowes

The unequal impact of the increase in sponsor licence revocations - Free Movement

The workers often suffer more than the employers. When an employer loses its sponsor licence, workers have 60 days after visa curtailment to find another

freemovement.org.uk

Thinking about this again, the salary threshold will increase by more than 2 years‘ pay growth. It’s based on the median full-time salary for level RQF3 and above occupations. 30 jobs will be downgraded to RQF level 2, most with below average salaries. Some such occupations have a lot of workers.

If the government hadn’t changed how they’re calculating going rates, then we’d have had some very high occupational requirements next year, eg: Programmers and software engineers: £59,863 (will now be £43,509*) Mechanical engineers: £52,527 (will now be £41,938*) *or overall threshold

Today's Budget includes a few interesting developments for UK migration policy, including changes to the Graduate route, salary thresholds for Skilled Workers, and the time sponsored workers have to find a new job. Here's what you need to know in 3 posts.

The government have announced that curtailment periods for visas will be extended to 6 months, but only for high-skilled workers. While this is a welcome improvement, it's worth bearing in mind who is bearing the brunt of employers losing their sponsor license.

These changes would only partially mitigate the harm of Earned Settlement being retrospective. I estimate it reduces the number of people forced to leave the country from 212,000 to 167,000 (if care workers are exempt). Most engineers, architects and vets could stay but would face a 10 year wait.

@marleymorris.bsky.social · 7d ago

Some quite significant reforms to Skilled Worker visa in the budget today, including: - reducing the skilled worker occupational salary thresholds from median to 25th percentile - extending graduate visa back to 2 years for certain high-compliance universities

Initial effects of the EU’s new asylum rules: Big increase in claims in Slovenia. Big fall in claims in Germany. Little difference elsewhere. Asylum claims have fallen a lot in Spain and Italy but this is probably for other reasons (the amnesty and crossings being stopped by Libya respectively).

Sorry just realised I missed a very important clarification here for those who haven’t seen the model. 50,000 is predicted net migration.

My model is now predicting about 50,000 for the year ending June 2026. This is lower than I initially thought, mainly because of a dramatic fall in student visa grants. However, even without Earned Settlement, there's many good reasons to think things can fall even further than my model:

There is a claim that rejoining the EU would lower immigration 'because we'd be recruiting EU nationals instead of non-EU nationals'. We now actually recruit a similar number of non-EU nationals on work visas as pre-Brexit.

Funny how many news stories are things I noticed ages ago.

Big fall in student visa holders switching directly to a work visa in January-March 2026 compared to the same time in 2025. This is graduate level jobs only. Any blank means fewer than 6 people.

While rejoining the EU would significantly increase net migration, there's no way it would increase it by anything like 200,000, unless countries like Ukraine, Albania and Moldova join the EU. We'd see far fewer people come from countries like Poland and Romania now. www.msn.com/en-gb/news/o...

This has been by far the quietest September since 2020 for small boat crossings. It's become increasingly clear that numbers really are down and it's not the weather or seasonal trends. Looking like about 25,000 people crossing this year which would be less than 2021 even.

164 different employers, who have since lost their sponsor license, sponsored 100 or more people in a single post town in 2023. The vast majority are care providers and there is a disproportionate number in areas where a lot of people were recruited from Africa.

The number of visas sponsored by companies who've lost their license has fallen in recent years. Some of this will of course be because less time has passed since the visa was sponsored, but a large part of this is much tighter scrutiny of visa applications. 2023 was especially bad.

British people unfairly deported from Sweden aren't a natural consequence of Brexit and it's not okay to laugh at. It's a subset of extremist decisions made by a far-right government affecting many nationalities. Mistreatment of immigrants isn't unique to the UK or USA. www.msn.com/en-gb/news/o...

www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-u...

Visa applications to study in UK plunge in crucial summer months - Research Professional News

August figures down by 32 per cent compared with 2023, as decline accelerates

researchprofessionalnews.com

17% fall year in year on student visa applications for August (120,300 to 99,500). Actual visa grants will fall further because of the higher rejection rate. Work visa main applicant applications dropping back to normal level from a seasonal high. Work visa dependant numbers starting to fall.

There has been a big increase in the rejection of health and care dependant visa applications made by Nigerians already living here. Likely this is people switching from a graduate visa to work in social care or as auxiliary nurses, who came with dependants but aren't allowed them on the work visa.

Does anyone know why family and private life grants have fallen so much? Is it just because it's the second renewal after the pandemic or is this because of tougher rules? (Applications down a lot as well, so it's not just a higher rejection rate, although that has happened too).

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula... London and most other big cities saw their population decline in 2025. This was with net migration of 170,000. We’re unlikely to see net migration get that high again, unless immigration law is liberalised or there is another major humanitarian crisis like Ukraine.

It's now clear that, barring any major crisis in the next few months, this year will be the lowest post pandemic year for the number of people crossing by small boat. About 25,000 people crossing at most, so lower than even 2021.

(main applicants only) Student visas granted Q2 of 2025: 52,619 Student visas granted Q2 of 2025: 29,289 44% fall Pakistani nationals only: Q2 of 2025: 5,812 Q2 of 2026: 575 90% fall!