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VISA INFORMATION
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Last chance for working holiday makers
The UK Home Office, Border and Immigration Service has announced that the working holiday scheme will be abolished as its new points based immigration system is phased in. The working holiday maker scheme that allows commonwealth residents who are under 31 to work in the UK for up to a year looks set to be replaced by the new Tier 5 points based system. Tier 5 sets up a Youth Mobility Scheme which allows people from participating countries to work for up to two years. The details are unclear at this stage but it looks as though it will be broadly similar to the working holiday maker scheme except that the age range will be 18 to 30 and it will allow people to work for up to two years rather than for one year.
It is expected that that this will be brought in later this year. Until it is introduced the working holiday scheme will continue to apply. People who are already on the working holiday visa will not be able to transfer to the tier 5 visas and will be limited to working for one year.
Currently the policy is to only allow people from countries with reciprocal arrangements to be eligible for tier 5 visas. Given that British nationals going to Australia on the Australian working holiday maker scheme are only allowed to work for a maximum of six months there has been some debate as to whether Australian will be eligible for Tier 5. It appears that this is unlikely but until the full details of tier 5 are released it will remain uncertain.
We will continue to monitor the situation and endeavour to keep people updated with the changes as they happen. Obviously we are not qualified to give detailed advice on visas and would recommend people speak to a migration specialist or consult the Home Office website.
www.bia.homeoffice.gov.uk
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