Minister of Commerce and Industry Nirmala Sitharaman confirmed this week that the Indian government will 'take up' the issue of the new visa rule with British authorities. The proposed reforms to the UK working visa program, announced last week, will lift the annual salary threshold for foreign workers on Tier 2 visas to £30k by April 2017, while companies that employ non-EEA workers on Tier 2 visas will be charged a £1,000 Immigration Skills charge for each person they employ.

The decision on Tier 2 visas comes following a report from the independent Migration Advisory Committee commissioned by UK Home Secretary Theresa May. The MAC had been tasked with investigating 'restricting skilled work visas to genuine skills shortages and highly specialist experts, raising Tier 2 salary thresholds to stop businesses from using foreign workers to undercut wages, and a new immigration skills charge to invest in funding for training for resident workers.'

India's opposition to the move is understandable, given that nearly 78 per cent of the 55,589 Tier 2 visa applications received by the British government in 2014-2015 were lodged by Indian nationals. Under the new rules, non-EU workers who have resided in the UK for less than 10 years will need to be earning more than £35k per year to be eligible for indefinite leave to remain (ILR) in the UK after their five-year visa expires. Though the exact number of people to be affected by the shift is unknown, some have estimated that as many as 30,000 Indian nationals could face deportation under the new Tier 2 rules.

Sources: The Hindu; The Guardian; Business Insider UK