mtuckersa wrote:gordon my first hand experience with Tier 1 with my employer was not good. I asked if they would pay for my existing visa since I had stayed with the company for 2 years. The response I got from them was 'We dont pay for Tier 1 visas only Tier 2' . Essentially saying that if you have the freedom to move around then you have to pay for it yourself. They were very keen to get me onto a Tier 2 but I wasnt keen been locked to the company.
Anyways, so i wrote off the fact that they will NOT pay for exisiting visa. Now its time for renewal of Tier 1. So I thought I would ask company again if they would sponsor cost of Tier 1. The answer again was NO, but Tier 2 YES.
Frankly I just dont see companies standing up for us in support of Tier 1. If WE want Tier 1 to stick around for extensions we gonna have to go it alone without their support. I cant see companies backing us, the argument is that they can always go for the cheaper Tier 2 that also keeps them to the company.
I 100% disagree with gordon's statement, it does not reflect reality...unfortunately
The more I think about this the more I can see bad news coming our way, anyways we can only try, if we dont try we cant make a difference
I say CONTINUE with the petition as planned
If the question is whether the HO will provide T1G with a mechanism to extend on the same terms as before, then one might try to convince employers that they want to retain the T1G staff that they now have (with the argument that, if those staff are sufficiently high-powered, they would remain only if they could retain the flexibility that they currently have under T1G). Arguably this does not apply to employees who are more easily substituted.
The issue of whether employers would pay for visa applications was not one that I addressed; that is not the support I had in mind. For strong employees, the issue of the employers' actual cost for the T2 visa is largely incidental to the retention argument. I have also found that my employer (for instance) has the incentive to support the continuation of T1G so as not to have those applicants' extension applications possibly take up part of the quota for T2 (if they were otherwise to be switched), and to avoid the very expensive aggro of recruitment exercises to replace difficult-to-replace T1G staff. It is a matter of making the employer see the common ground with employees' interests; when discussing interests and incentives, it is not always reducible to pounds and pence.
Frankly, I can't see that the Government would take any notice of an argument that doesn't lay out in explicit terms what they (the Government) stand to gain. Why should they care what economic migrants claim to have given up in their home countries ? Why should they care about a litany of demands from a population segment whose utility has (in their view) been drawn into question ? Do the letter-writers address why the Government should not try to filter out under-performers ? The value of T1G is not a forgone conclusion by any stretch; one should not speak as if it were.
The problem is one of collective action, and one in which the articulation must come from a sector that they trust. T1G isn't that sector at the moment, whilst employers are trusted. At present, these politicians are about to receive a pile of letters with a list of expectations without any substantive offerings; were I one of them, one of the first things that would come to mind would be, how many of these people wrote these letters between stacking shelves or hanging out at a security kiosk ?
Which is why I've contacted my vice-chancellor's office and Universities UK (I work in a university), rather than writing direct to Cameron and May et al. I would not discourage all of you (collectively) to send letters, but by no means should you underestimate the scale of some employers' vested interests in T1G. In this Government, employers can and do exercise far more influence than groups of private citizens; completely to ignore the reality of your strongest potential advocate, is strategically flawed.