Visa costs deter international scientists and engineers

Sachin Ravikumar, Reuters

It took Ed Roberts over a year to find a senior scientist to work at his cancer research laboratory in Scotland, a delay he blames on high UK visa costs that made it harder to attract international workers. Scientific academy the Royal Society says UK immigration fees for foreign workers are up to 17 times higher than the average for other leading science nations, inflated in part by an upfront charge to access Britain’s state-run health service. The Society, scientists, consultants and a lawmaker who spoke to Reuters said the fees are making it harder to hire global talent to fill Britain’s skills gap and undermining Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s “mission” to grow the economy. They also risk efforts to attract scientists who may leave the United States following President Donald Trump’s cuts to research funding.

“If we can’t convince people to come here, they’re going somewhere else,” said Roberts, who interviewed a mix of British and foreign candidates for the specialised role. “It’s definitely slowing down research.” Fees for visas to live and work in Britain have increased as successive governments vowed to cut record net migration. Roberts said an immunology researcher from Hong Kong rejected an offer to join his Cancer Research UK Scotland Institute over the roughly 15,000-pound ($19,800) upfront bill he would have to pay to move to Britain with his wife and child. Like many other employers, the lab will reimburse visa costs for the employee but not accompanying family members.

Reuters was not able to contact the Hong Kong researcher.

Frenchman Baptiste Brauge was reimbursed for his 4,400-pound visa fee when he took up a separate role with Roberts. Even so, it was “frightening” to initially part with a large chunk of his personal savings, the 28-year-old researcher said.

Britain’s Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS) went up by 66% last year, reaching 1,035 pounds a year per adult.

“As soon as these kind of things come in, the number of applicants we have go down,” Roberts said. “It just makes it hard to convince them that this is an attractive place to be.”

Starmer’s government, which has commissioned a review of labour shortages in sectors including IT and engineering, says it is difficult to compare different countries’ visa costs.

It said a policy paper would soon set out a plan “to restore order to our broken immigration system, linking immigration, skills and visa systems to grow our domestic workforce, end reliance on overseas labour and boost economic growth”.

Britain currently charges businesses 12,120 pounds for a typical five-year skilled worker visa - nearly 60% more than in 2021, said Louise Haycock, a partner at immigration services firm Fragomen. Adding a partner and two children could push the upfront cost to 30,000 pounds.

According to the Royal Society, even Britain’s specialist route for researchers and innovators, the Global Talent Visa, is the most expensive among comparable visas of 18 leading science nations, including the US, China, Japan, France and Germany.

The Society said it was hard to estimate how many people had been discouraged from applying for British jobs.

Cancer Research UK estimates it will spend 700,000 pounds on immigration fees annually — money it says could be used in the fight against cancer. British fees have been increased as net migration hit record levels in recent years, fuelling a debate over the ability of strained public services to cope with population growth versus the need for foreign workers to drive the economy. The former Conservative government also raised the minimum salary threshold for immigrant workers by nearly 50%, hoping to deter what it described as “cut-price foreign labour”.

Visas granted for science, research and engineering roles fell by a third in the second half of 2024 from the same period a year earlier, Home Office data shows. The fall, which followed the increases to the salary threshold and IHS, was broadly in line with a drop in overall work visas.

Alison Noble, a senior academic and the Royal Society’s foreign secretary, said the costs will limit Britain’s ability to court those who may seek to leave the U.S. after Trump’s administration cut funding for universities and research bodies. “One factor will be, can they afford it, or how open and welcoming is a country?” Noble told Reuters.

Starmer’s artificial intelligence adviser, Matt Clifford, warned in the government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan that the “cost and complexity” of visas created barriers for startups and deterred overseas talent from coming to the UK.

Although home to world-famous universities including Cambridge, Oxford and Imperial College London, Britain has a severe science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) skills shortage.

Of 934,000 vacancies recorded in the economy at the end of 2023, about 46% were in STEM-related fields, a University of Cambridge report said last year.

Fragomen’s Haycock said engineering had been hit hard by the salary threshold rising because of its reliance on overseas workers, forcing businesses outside London with typically lower salaries to pay significantly more.

Julia King, a lawmaker who chaired the Science and Technology Committee in parliament’s upper House of Lords until January, described the restrictive visa policy as an “act of national self-harm”. “If we’re going to get growth in this country, it’s going to be in these knowledge-intensive areas,” King, an engineer who also serves as chancellor at a research university in England, told Reuters. “We’re shooting ourselves in the foot.” .