Tier 5 YMS 워홀러에서 Tier 2 General (취업비자)로 전형하는 방법!

YMS 워홀러 여러분, 열심히 살고 계시죠 ^^

저에게 이메일 문의 보내주신 분들께 먼저 제가 모두 다 답 해 드리지 못해서 죄송합니다. 최근에 페북에 올라온 글 또한 같은 질문들이 좀 있어서 아래에 한번에 정리해 올려봅니다.

아래 Infographic 을 굵게 정리해 보면 이렇습니다:

1. 우선 Tier 5 YMS 에서 취업비자로 전형하기 위해서는 Tier 2 licensed sponsor 가 필요하고,
2. Tier 2 licensed sponsor 를 신청해서 얻기 위해서는 영국내 구인광고 (Resident Labour Market Test) 를 거쳐야 합니다. 여기에 다 설명하기에는 아주 복잡한 규율이지만 최소한 2곳에 광고를 해야 하고 최소 28일 동안 광고해야 하며 정확한 Job Description 과 적당한 연봉을 offer 해야 합니다. 여기서 적당한 연봉이란 최소한 £30,000 이고, 직종에 따라서 더 높을 수 있습니다.
3. 또 중요한 것은 Tier 2 sponsor licence 를 이미 보유 하고 있는 회사라도 워홀러가 Tier 2 로 전형 하는 경우 채용 결정 이전에 위에 2번과 마찬가지로 영국내 구인광고를 RUN해야만 employment offer 가 가능합니다.
4. 영국내 구인광고 (Resident Labour Market Test) 가 무사히 (?) 끝나면 스폰서 회사에서는 정식으로 Job Offer를 줄수 있습니다. 
5. 그 다음 스폰서 회사가 홈오피스에 신청을 해서 restricted certificate of sponsorship (RCOS) allocation 을 받아야지만 워홀러 당신에게 발급 (assign) 해 줄수 있습니다. 스폰서 회사는 RCOS를 받기 위해서 매달 한번 열리는 신청기간에 allocaiton 신청을 해야 하고, 만약 한번에 성공하지 못하면 그 다음 달에 재신청이 가능합니다.
6. 회사가 RCoS 를 받으면 워홀러에게 발급 (assign) 해 줄수 있습니다.
7. 워홀러는 RCoS 를 발급 받으면 바로 한국에서 부터 Tier 2 General Migrant 비자 신청이 가능합니다. (물론 RCoS allocation 신청 및 발급 받는 동안에 한국에 계셔도 상관은 없지요).

여기서 중요한 점은 위에 1 - 5번까지는 모두 가 회사의 몫 입니다. 워홀러가 할수 있거나 해야 할 역활이 아닌거죠. 또한 스폰서 절차 중에서 변호사의 도움이 필요한 부분도 바로 1 - 5번 부분인데, 이 업무를 위해서는 역시 워홀러가 아닌 해당 회사가 변호사를 고용 해야 하겠습니다.

이후 한국에서 Tier 2 General 비자 신청을 하실때에도 워홀러 스스로가 개인적인 상황에 따라서 변호사의 도움을 받으시는 것이 필요할 수도 있겠습니다.

아래 infographic 도 첨부 했으니 한번 보세요. 도움 되시기 바랍니다.

참고로 아래 infographic 에 나온 다양한 홈 오피스 신청 비용은 자주 바뀔수 있으니 홈 오피스 웹싸이트를 늘 확인 하셔야 합니다.

How to pick the GOOD out of the Bad and the UGLY and HOW to get the most out of each of them

1. Who are you talking to and how experienced are they? Qualification of a regulated professional should be easily confirmed. This blog post is focused on solicitors (Solicitors Regulations Authority) so to check whether the person who claims to be a Solicitor is currently qualified to practice, go to the Law Society Website; Find A Solicitor. Individual solicitors and their law firms can be found. For barrister, go to the directory for the Bar Council Directory and for OISC advisers. A good thing about using a legal service marketplace like LawXero is that we aim to work with only the regulated professionals who can be verified in the public domain. So any fee quote you receive from us will have been checked initially. Questions like 'have you done many of these cases before' won’t tell you much.

2. Avoid those who 'guarantee' a result. That one should ring BIG ALARM BELLS inside your head and here’s why: Most of what we do as lawyers is to assist you to present your case to a decision maker be it the court, local council's licensing panel, the Home Office or the HMRC (Tax authorities). Lawyers are not the decision makers ourselves. It is precisely for this reason that we cannot - and should not - guarantee the success of any process you are attempting. We can guarantee that we will give it 100% of our utmost skill and care but a guarantee anything beyond this is likely to be a meaningless fib, quite frankly.

3. Avoid those who give you % rate on the success of their previous cases. It’s never a good measure of competence. After all, someone who has done 1 case with success could claim 100% success rate. You see where I am going with this?

4. Do double check your lawyer's availability at the outset - ask for a clear timescale of when the work is expected to begin and end. Lawyers almost always have several cases on the go and we manage these in the order of priority. If your lawyer is anything like me, she might prefer this timetabling exercise just so that she could organise yours and others’ cases in order to carve out time to give your case sufficient attention.

5. Know what (or for whom) you are paying. Is it a fixed fee or hourly chargeable? If the work is chargeable hourly, who else besides your main lawyer will be working on your case? A junior solicitor? Paralegal? Trainee solicitors? What is their rate and how experienced are they? Do you even want trainees, juniors on your case? (If not, can you afford to have only the senior lawyer on the case?)

6. How much should you be paying? This is a difficult one as there is no clear 'market rate' for lawyer's work. Plus, some works are completely unpredictable in terms of complexity, length, and depth of involvement so a pre-case tariff can’t be given. The profession is catching up with the market demands though and it has been suggested that law firms must publish their prices - a la carte. But generally, a good tip is not to fall for the cheapest sounding offer, unless it comes with some plausible reasons for the discount (e.g. lawyer with limited experience is branching out to a new area of practice? Trainee or a Junior to primarily handle the case under supervision? Carefully manage the frequency of contact with your lawyer- that’s right, the more often you contact us, the higher your bill will be!). Lawyers usually charge by the hour. Even fixed fees are calculated by reference to our hourly rates - we just decide to fix them in certain cases if we think we could take the risk of the work running over. Lawyer marketplace platforms such as LawXero can deliver directly to your Inbox fixed fee quotes from several lawyers which will give you an idea of how much you should budget before any work begins. LawXero is not a bidding or barter system and our lawyers are treated fairly when they are asked to give a quote. Unlike other lawyer marketplace business models, we don't exist to undercut the lawyers on their fees by encouraging competition between them. This means that our lawyers are happy with any client they receive and remain competent by being able to focus on their craft without being distracted by money talks.

7. Pay on time, every time. I know it sounds a bit like a snake oil salesman but there is no way to avoid this topic. Let's face it; it’s a service like any other and it must be paid for. Law firms are not a charity. Okays clients often forget this part but unless the money drops, lawyers can’t take responsibility for any work, let alone advice, that you might later rely on. In practice, unless money is paid (whether for a fixed fee or money on account of hourly chargeable budget), the lawyer can’t start on your work. But what about those lawyers who are - let’s just say - less than scrupulous? So there are some crooks who are just after your money. Sure. But in majority of the cases, no lawyer goes through 3 years of undergraduate, a year of intensive law school, endure through countless rejections from training contract applications, while amassing a debt the size of which is on par with an SME's annual income, only to come out the other end a seasoned crook. In fact, most starry-eyed lawyers will recount the first moment they decided to get in to law that involves some incident of prejudice and injustice and wanting to help people (or even worse, trying to make the world a better place!). Most lawyers don't want to haggle on price. The traditionalist in us think it vulgar, time-consuming, and most of all, we just want to get on with what we do best - start working on your case! Time spent on talking about fees will not be charged but you might lose out in other ways as it eats into the lawyer’s availability for more important works that they could be doing in your case. You don't want to go down in the file history as 'that client' who never pays bills on time without challenging each item twice.

8. Along with prompt payment, get the basic ID documents ready. Especially if you are in a 'hurry' to get some help, nothing 'activates' a lawyer fastest than giving them the following:

a. Copy of Passport (or Driving licence, anything with your photo ID on it);
b. Utility Bill, bank statement, or council tax statement with your name and address on it (from
the last 3 months and not any older); and
c. Payment for the job (whether it's the whole of agreed fixed fee or initial fee). 

In fact, a lawyer in possession of these three things will not be able to refuse to start working.

9. Don’t be 'that' client who nit-picks spelling mistakes in the lawyer's informal email. Don't call your lawyer every day (unless, of course, this is necessary and is arranged between you). Lawyers typically divide their time into time for doing legal work (you know, the work you are paying them to do), admin (talking about money, opening client files), and business development (attend networking or devise a brilliant marketing strategy to bring in more clients, more work). Anything outside of the time for doing legal work is not chargeable to clients but it does eat into the time that the lawyer has to spend in your case. And it might give the lawyer a bad impression of you as a client.

10. Be nice to your lawyer. Give him/ her plenty of confidence and praise when things go well. After all, one of the legitimate reasons to break off your retainer with your lawyer is where the client has lost trust in the lawyer's advice or professional competence. We are professionals but we are not robots - no matter how 'Rainman' some of us might come across. We have feelings. We like to do well and we like it even better if clients recognise the hard work for all its worth. And you know what? We want to do even better! To make you happy! After all, what we provide is an utterly personal service and because Individual lawyers are regulated by the Solicitors Regulations Authority as well as the law firms we work for, much like Vidal Sassoon (of the hairdressing fame from the 80s), "if you don't look good; we don't look good". If we are lavished with your trust, your lawyer is most likely to go that extra mile beyond just the contractual obligations in order to help you.
 

Eunyoung Cho
Co-Founder of LawXero & Immigration Specialist Solicitor-Advocate 

See Original Post at LawXero. 

Hear ye, hear ye,

The Tier 1 Exceptional Talent Endorsement allocation will double! (scream!)

Currently, the 5 Designated Competent Bodies get the following number of endorsement allocations:  

• Arts Council England - 250
• The British Academy - 250
• The Royal Society - 150
• The Royal Academy of Engineering - 150
• Tech City UK - 200 

A total of 1,000 allocation is due to be doubled to 2,000, and to be spread across the 5 DCBs above - hopefully in the same proportions but Tech City UK is likely to sweep up most as the move is to accommodate and promote the growth of tech companies and business in general in the UK. 

Good news, right? Well yes and ... 'meh'.

Ever since the scheme started in 2011, the quotas shown above have never been exceeded. See the stats here. Plus, the standard of evidence of experience and public recognition of your work as a specialist in any of the areas is so - deliberately - high, this category really isn't for any reasonable talent. As it says on the box, 'world leaders' or those with the potential to become world leaders' in their chosen field. Only a track record of producing consistently outstanding work or prescribed experiences (e.g. for Tech City UK, a track record of taking a tech company through to IPO,  etc.) or taking an internationally well-known research fellowship (e.g. Wellcome Trust, Cancer Research UK, British Heart Foundation etc.) will suffice. 

Added to this, the increasing number of applicants seems to be attracting more (and therefore new) judging panel members for each body who do not know how to apply the body's and the UKVI's criteria, some of whom giving incredibly subjective reasons to refuse to recognise the international merit of excellence of an applicant, or refusing for want of some further evidence not previously required by the body's criteria, all make the prospect of success difficult to foresee. 

Given the increasing 'difficulties' (some which should be addressed for improvements), and the consistently low subscription rate of applicants, increasing the number of allocation in this category, even in the light of Brexit promises (and expected Tech City applicants), seems to afford very little 'real' advantage to prospective applicants. Though announcements like this certainly make the Home Office appear to be espousing the idea that Britain is open to highly skilled migrants... 

See the Home Office's announcement page here. 

An out-of-sync email format of a message from the Home Office which comes with their standard warning in a frighteningly large front, no doubt designed to instil fear and command the absolute obedience of sponsors literally spells out dramatic warning that "if you fail to comply with your responsibilities as a sponsor" then they'll come after you for three generations to come... make you wish you'd never been a sponsor. ever. in. your. life. 

I screen-captured this initially because I was tickled by the delicious marriage between the UKVI's Judge-Dredd-esque obtuseness and the accident of my email format, but really, we're living in sad times, our laws and enforcements doing their best to defy the high ideals of Britishness that so many of us around the world have come to admire.  

The Home Office took some time to get back to my request from April 2017, but at least they are here! Hear ye, hear ye, all Entrepreneurs in the Tech World, these are the stats. 

All self-explanatory, but thought I'd explain a few things. 

1. This bar chart shows you the (%) rate of successful applicants to Tech City UK for endorsement. These figures should include applications for Tech North since they both fall under the same visa and sub-discipline category.
2. The numbers along the X axis (the vertical line on the left) shows the no. of applications.
3. Exceptional Talent and Promise figures appear in separate bars. Where there is no bar shown, there is - apparently - no data or '0' entry. 
4. Bearing in mind the 150 allocations given to Tech City UK each year (split into 2 chunks, April - Sept, then Oct - (following year) April), the graph above is intended to show a trend (if any) of the time of the year when applications tend to be concentrated. 
5. 'Undecided applications' means applications still being considered for a determination at the time the stats were collected.  
6. A general observation is that the total number of applicants for both Talent and Promise category to Tech City UK is increasing each year with no rejected applications! 
7. Those that are neither successful nor rejected fall into the other category of either 'undecided' or 'Not Endorsed'. No precise definition of 'Not Endorsed' is given by the Home Office yet but one could conjecture these to be applications where further information was needed but never received, or where the applicant just abandons the application. 
8. Despite the increase in the number of applications each year, success rate remains optimistically high. Also, the trend of fewer applicants than there are allocations seem to continue, meaning you still would stand an excellent chance of being considered, and achieving success in your application - at any time of the allocation year!

More details are coming soon! Watch this space. 

If you are interested in getting your case assessed for an application, contact me for a consultation. 

A burning question from all applicants - Is my art covered by this visa?

The more creative and esoteric or pioneering a discipline you pursue, the more pertinent this questions will be for you. For example, considering my cultural proximity to Korea and K-Pop, I receive these questions often. I've finally received a response - of a kind - from Arts Council England this month.

As suspected, the areas of art assessed by the Council appears to be rather 'traditional' e.g. for Dance = Ballet, Music = traditional instrumentalist, but do read on and draw your own impression/ conclusion.

I've shared both my questions and their response below as they were received.

1.      Specifically please could you confirm whether the following Visual Arts disciplines are assessed by ACE for endorsement:

a.     ceramics, 

b.    drawing, 

c.     painting, 

d.    sculpture, 

e.     printmaking, 

f.      Book Arts,

g.     Textile design, 

h.       crafts, 

i.       photography, 

j.       architecture,

k.     industrial design, 

l.       graphic design, 

m.     fashion design, 

n.    interior design,

o.     decorative art,

For Visual Arts we assess a wide variety of disciplines. From the list of disciplines provided most of these (apart from industrial design, *most areas of fashion design, **some areas of graphic design, architecture and interior design) are assessed by Arts Council England.

Ceramics, Textile design and Crafts (*including some areas that could be classified as fashion design) would need to be items specifically made for exhibition and not for commercial purposes. For example – ‘The making of notionally functional or decorative crafted objects. A crafted object is one which has been made by hand, not manufactured (although it may include limited production runs using automated or semi-automated processes eg printing on textiles). It has often been made by the hand of the product's designer, and shows their skill and creativity. Crafts include traditional/heritage crafts which use skills and techniques that have been passed down from generation to generation and contemporary crafts using characterised by innovative techniques and use of materials.’

**Some areas of graphic design, architecture and interior design can be considered however, this cannot be commercial, must be specifically related to the arts and cannot include production or construction of items/buildings.

As there is not an exhaustive list of every discipline that we assess, we advise applicants in our published eligibility guidance that applicants should contact us if they require advice on what disciplines we do or do not assess.

  4. Specifically please could you confirm whether the following Music disciplines are assessed by ACE for endorsement under Tier 1 Exceptional Talent/ Promise:

a.        K-Pop (Korean Pop) music performers (singers, group members)

b.        K-pop concert designers, concert/ music video producers and directors, musicians,

c.         Contemporary music band members (heavy metal, rock, indie genre), alternatively, a list of musical genres covered by ACE

For Music we assess a wide variety of disciplines. From the list provided we could consider all of the disciplines listed. In general for music we support:

Classical, Baroque, Early Music, Chamber, Orchestral, Choral, Choirs, Vocal Ensembles, Gospel, Brass bands, Opera, Popular (pop, rock, soul, country, funk, hip-hop, r&b, urban, blues, singer-songwriters, electronic music), Jazz, Experimental, Swing, Big Band, Folk (traditional music and song indigenous to the British Isles), World Music (music primarily associated with a specific nation outside of the British Isles)

Members of bands or groups will need to apply separately and provide evidence that proves their individual promise/talent – in accordance with the eligibility criteria.

As there is not an exhaustive list of every discipline that we assess, we advise applicants in our published eligibility guidance that applicants should contact us if they require advice on what disciplines we do or do not assess.

5.     Finally, The composition of the decision-making panel at ACE.

Arts Council England are not the decision makers for Tier 1 Visas. The application and decision-making process is undertaken by the Home Office. Arts Council England's role is to provide an assessment of an application against the published criteria for Exceptional Talent/Promise – which is carried out by one of our pool of artform specialists from our teams across the country – which is then moderated and signed off by a Senior Manager who checks that guidance has been followed appropriately before returning the recommendation to the Home Office.

As usual, my thoughts on any potential applicants for endorsement is that an endorsement application is infinitely worth a try (rather than not). A refusal from this application does not prejudice any future visa application and unlike a visa application, it does not require you to surrender your passport for assessment. Ultimately the more esoteric your discipline, the stronger the case for making an application for Art Council to assess. Therefore, the only way to 'find out' your chances of success is to prepare and submit an application straight away. 

If you would like to start an assessment of your application, please contact me here.