Employer swap and certificate nightmare

[elmo8]

Hi all,

Currently on a tier 2 general, having been sponsored to stay after my tier 4 and tier 4 DES. New employer received their license to sponsor a few months back, but were given bad advice by the solicitor. They were told to get a restricted certificate (and thus, did not request any unrestricted when applying for the license). This puts us in an awkward situation. I have resigned my current position, with my final day in about 4 weeks. At this stage we are waiting on the unrestricted certificate before we can make the application. So a couple of questions:

- Does anyone have an idea of the timeline for unrestricted Cos allocations? They've been trying to get hold of the priority swap service, but apparently this is limited to 50 a day and still no avail. Thus our fall back here is the default turn around time on the unrestricted Cos.
- Is it feasible to make an out of country application from somewhere it's possible to make a PBS application, and can such an application be made from a country other than the home country?
- On what date will my current visa expire, the day after my final day with my current company, the day the home office receives notification of my resignation, or when I receive their letter?

Thank you in advance for any information you can provide.

[elmo8]

Update:

Home office are currently working on allocation renewal requests that were submitted on the 26th of March. Ours was submitted 15th April. Official timeframe is 18 weeks.

As a result, we're investigating the feasibility of me popping over to France and using the already allocated restricted certificate to make an out of country application.

Any obvious reasons why that is not an option?

[Frontier Mole]

Just one little wrinkle - as you already hold a tier 2 visa if you go overseas to apply using the restricted COS it will be deemed you have left the UK and will be subject to a 12 month cooling off period prior to you being able to make an out of country tier 2 application.

So this idea is a non starter.

[Frontier Mole]

Your new employer should have used the priority service for the unrestricted COS application- 10 day turnaround.

Whoever is advising your sponsor needs to be sacked as that is two basic errors in a row. Time to say bye bye to yet another clueless immigration lawyer

[elmo8]

Hi Frontier Mole,

Thanks for responding. I found out about the cooling off period issue yesterday, so now it's going to be a matter of running out the clock on the curtailment period and hoping for the best.

As far as the priority unrestricted goes, they've been trying to get a hold of someone but apparently there's a limit of 50 priority requests a day. So far there's been no joy.

Not the best situation, but more certainty than I'm used to with the home office. It either will be on time or it won't.

Oh well!

[Frontier Mole]

I am betting you are not even curtailed or still have 30+ days to go if you are, even if you have to wait the full 18 weeks for a COS allocation.

Curtailment process is not speedy and many on the forum have waited for months and months before it was received.

[elmo8]

I've gotten that impression, so that's comforting.

Luckily we got a priority certificate on Friday morning.

Unluckily it's now been more than 6 months since the RLMT.

It'll be at least 28 days before we get to apply now!

Talk about a rollercoaster.