UK visa change hits Indian nurses
Wednesday, 01/07/2015
http://paper.hindustantimes.com/epaper/viewer.aspx
LONDON: Britain’s health officials have raised an alarm over the prospect of over 1,200 Indian nurses and thousands more from other nonEU countries being forced to leave the country due to a new income threshold required under visa rules for continued stay in the UK.
Worried over the impact on patient safety and care, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has petitioned the government to lower or abolish the income threshold or remove nurses from the category for which it is applicable.
The number of Indian nurses and midwives moving to the UK has been falling in recent years, alongwith falling number of Indian doctors, as the Indian health sector grows exponentially.
Changes made in 2012 require that nurses who entered the UK after 6 April, 2011, on a Tier 2 visa will need to earn an annual salary of £35,000 for indefinite stay in the country. Nurses can stay and work for only six years if they cannot reach the threshold.
The Nursery and Midwifery Council told HT that since 2011, 1,218 nurses and midwives trained in India had registered with the council. Since it is difficult for a nurse to reach the threshold within six years, most of them would need to return to India after 2017.
