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In our September "how can we help you?" thread, Academic Migrant writes:
For foreign academics working in the UK, has anyone had any luck in getting some assistance with visa application fee or IHS or the application for permanent leave? It's really expensive for people with family, and I'm not sure I can save enough (given the living cost crisis) as the single source of income to pay for the application fee for permanent leave.
Do any readers have any helpful tips or insights?
Last year the university reimbursed my visa fees. However, they have not reimbursed my partner’s and kid’s fees and health surcharges. Especially the health surcharge is a scam, given that you pay health insurance twice (one with the fee, then with taxes). So my advise is: don’t go to work to the uk, unless it’s your only option or you get a position like reader/professor.
My university covered all of my moving expenses (from the US to UK), including visa and IHS fees, up to £12000. I’m not sure if they would have covered family costs, but my sense was I could use the £12000 for anything that was relevant for moving. Another institution in the UK offered to cover up to £3000 in moving as well as the visa, but I’m not sure if it would have covered IHS. I felt very lucky, though the visa fees are increasing even more, and even £12000 sounds like it would get you farther than it does! I’m sorry you’re in this position.
I hope that helps at least!
My university has a relocation expenses policy and a visa reimbursement policy, so my moving/visa/IHS fees were all covered. I would check to see if your institution has a visa reimbursement policy first. If they do, check to see if there’s a policy on salary advances for UK immigration fees (my university has this as well; it’s capped at £5000, but it still helps). One annoying thing is that reimbursements for visa and IHS fees count as earnings for some reason. This means we never get the full amount back because taxes and NICs are deducted from the reimbursement. I hope you find a solution!
I am SO glad there’s a post about this, because PEOPLE REALLY NEED TO KNOW ABOUT HOW EXPENSIVE IT IS TO MOVE TO THE UK.
The visa application fee is ~£700 if you’re initially applying for a working visa that lasts up to 3 years, or close to £1,500 if you’re initially applying for a working visa that lasts more than 3 years (I say ‘initially applying’ because you can have an initial working visa that lasts up to 5 years and then after 5 years either (a) extend it or (b) apply for indefinite leave to remain/some more permanent status.)
Don’t believe me? See here: https://www.gov.uk/skilled-worker-visa/how-much-it-costs
Now, most if not all University employers will pay you back for the working visa. BUT—and as has been noted above—they effectively add the visa cost to your pay check such that you get taxed on it. This means that you’ll likely still end up being out of pocket for anywhere from 1/3 to 2/3 of the cost of the visa (depending on your salary, visa length, etc.)
The real kicker, though, isn’t the visa—it’s the ‘NHS/Health Surcharge’ (details of this are also in the link above). Right now, you have to pay ~£600 for every year that you plan to be in the UK to access the national healthcare system, and this isn’t optional. Note that many University employers WON’T cover this for you at all. So if you initially applied for a 3 year working visa, you’d be ~£1800 out of pocket for the health surcharge cost. And it gets worse: the UK government recently announced that it plans to raise the price tag on the health surcharge from ~£600 a year to ~£1000 a year in the near future. Assuming that they follow through on that plan, you’d likely be £3k out of pocket for the health surcharge if your initial working visa was for three years.
Note that all of the above just applies to you. If you have a family that is moving to the UK with you, then you’ll need to pay for all of their visas and all of their healthcare surcharges as well. It’s possible that some Universities are generous and help with these costs, but from what I’ve heard, they’d be the exception rather than the rule if they did exist.
So, if you have a job offer from a UK University, please ASK THE UNIVERSITY ABOUT THESE VISA AND HEALTHCARE SURCHARGE COSTS. For instance, what they cover, whether they offer interest-free loans to help, etc. If you have a choice between a UK job and a job elsewhere, you’ll want to consider whether the former will potentially land you in a lot of debt that the latter won’t.
Humanati: I want also to add that by being on a visa, you do not have access to any public funds or tax credit provided by the UK government (childcare allowance etc). UK is still good research-wise, so it might be worth to accept a permanent job in the UK, but only to land a better (paid) academic job in the future in countries like US, Germany, Singapore etc.
Just an update. Philosophers I work with are very sympathetic to my situation. They have been trying to argue with leadership to do something about it, but were so far unsuccessful.
Admin has also been honest with me with the simple market response: many internationals are still willing to work. They are thus unconcerned with the quality of higher education being affected.
Op,
I think that your Admin understated matters: not only are many internationals willing to work, but there is a massive oversupply of highly qualified applicants for any job in UK academia, from professor to 9 month teaching fellow. The majority of these will be international applicants. This is in spite of the fact that the UK, unlike many European countries, does not offer special tax incentives for foreign professionals.
There are several reasons for this glut of highly qualified and brilliant international applicants, but a big factor is language. A job in UK academia does not require any more language than is required to publish in top journals. Learning Dutch, Italian, German etc. is a more intimidating prospect for many academics. Another is location: compared to New Zealand or Austrialia (which also have gluts of highly qualified applicants for almost any job) the UK is not as “far away” for North American, non-UK European, or Middle Eastern applicants.
Given the huge supply of highly qualified (even overqualified) academics for even the roughest UK jobs, I suspect that the experience could be made a lot more expensive without significantly affecting the quality of UK higher education. Even if I just think of the dozens of qualified UK philosophers I know who can’t get so much as an interview for a UK postdoc, they could meet UK higher education’s philosophy requirements for the forseeable future even if international applicants were banned.
Disclosure: I’m one of those qualified philosophers who can’t get interview for UK jobs, but who can get extremely generously paid/research heavy (and tax-incentivised) jobs in other countries that struggle to fill positions and retain staff. Perhaps my ego incentivises me to overestimate the extent to which the UK job market is flooded with brilliant applicants. However, it fits with what I’ve heard from the experience of UK search committees, even for almost comically unattractive jobs.
Many universities in the UK recognize the value of attracting and retaining talented academics. Some universities offer programs to help cover visa application fees and the Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS) for their employees. Check with your Human Resources department to see if your university has such a program.
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