❗Immigration articles worth reading (and worrying). Part 1. School sends home a teacher because she has no right to work.

School sends home a teacher because she has no right to work – her Indefinite Leave is in the old passport. If your passport expired, do you need to transfer your UK visa? Yes and No, there is no short answer. 

Was the school correct in applying the law? Bizarrely, yes, they were.  

If you have a biometric residence permit (BRP), a visa card that looks like a bank card, you don’t have to do anything until this visa expires. If, however, you have an old Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) sticker in your passport, then the answer becomes more complex. 

In this article, a Trinidadian deputy headteacher (no less) has had her ILR since 1989, is married to a UK citizen and has British children. The immigration law does not require her to transfer ILR to a new passport, she can travel with both passports. It is employment law that was ‘the problem’ here. 

Some relatively recent changes in employment law made it compulsory for non-EU citizens to have either: 

• Valid BRP. It has expiry date, unlike old ILR stamps that were, well, indefinite.  
• ILR sticker in the valid passport. 
• Same applies to non-permanent visas, such as Spouse visa for 2.5 years or Tier 2 visa for 3 years etc. This article was based on the confusion between a visa saying ‘indefinite’ but being ‘no so indefinite’. 

Solutions? 

The press likes to dramatise such events, so they report that “family appealed for help”. There are, in fact, 3 solutions:

• To transfer ILR to a biometric card. It won’t be attached to a passport anymore but it will have its own expiry date. This costs money in Government fees, especially to do it on 24-hour service, so the cynics in us think maybe this was the purpose all the way! 
• To apply for British Citizenship and get a UK passport. 
• To do both: to get a BRP on a 24-hour service, so the right to work is not affected. And then to apply for Citizenship which cannot be sped up but worth waiting for. 

Further question to think (and worry) about: 

What happens to biometric ILR when you apply for British Citizenship? 

Next time: 

NHS doctor is threatened with deportation over small visa mistake. How a basic, non-common-sense rule can stop from securing a UK  visa. And why you shouldn’t worry if your refusal letter says “You must now leave the UK”.

 

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