General conditions for obtaining a Global Talent visa

The Global Talent immigration programme is designed for talented professionals in the fields of science, digital technology, arts and culture who wish to come to the UK to work in the relevant field. The visa is issued at the applicant's request for a period of 1 to 5 years.

Please note that there are two types of visas of this type:

• exceptional talent
• exceptional promise

Requirements to the applicant

• Applicant's age must be at least 18 years old.
• The applicant must prove high competence in the declared field by obtaining the approval of an authorised UK body.
• The Global Talent visa application fee is £456 when applying to the approving authority and £152 when applying for a visa. There is a £608 fee for each family member of the immigrant.
• Insurance £624/year (Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS)).

Key benefits of the Global Talent visa:

• The duration of the visa is from 1 year to 5 years
• Pathway to ILR (Permanent Residence):

- Exceptional Talent can switch to ILR after 3 years. And after another year get citizenship, that is only 4 years to passport in total. Only the investor visa, popularly known as the "golden passport", is faster than this.
- Exceptional Promise can switch to ILR after 5 years. And after one more year get citizenship, that is a total of 6 years to passport.
*The general rule when applying for ILR is that you cannot spend more than 180 days outside the UK in the

• Not tied to one employer
• It is possible to work as an employee, as a director, or be self-employed
• Place of work can be changed without notifying migration authorities
• Allows you to bring your partner and children up to 18 years of age
• Tech Nation takes an average of 5 to 8 weeks to process applications
• No income or bank balance requirements
• No English skills required (no IELTS etc.)

How to choose an endorsement body

The talent visa process consists of 2 steps. The first is the application for approval of the candidate and the second is the application for entry clearance or leave to remain. The list of fields of activity, in which a specialist's prospectivity is assessed, includes several areas:

• fashion industry, design;
• architecture;
• engineering sciences;
• culture and art;
• cinema and television;
• natural sciences and medicine;
• humanities;
• digital technologies.

A talent visa can be obtained without approval if the applicant has one of the awards listed in a special application on the UK Immigration website. Also, in a simplified procedure the approval is granted to persons:

• working in the period of the last 5 years in higher education institutions and academic institutions in the UK;
• having awards (scholarships) in the published list of the Royal Society, Royal Academy of Engineering and British Academy.

For each area of activity, the endorsement is issued by a specially authorised organisation. For example, in the area of digital technology, this continues to be Tech Nation.

Let's take a closer look at the requirements for the Digital Talent Visa below.

Global Talent Visa for Digital Technology (IT) Representatives

As the field of digital technology encompasses many professions and IT engagement options, there are different understandings of who is from the field and can qualify for a digital talent visa. Tech Nation suggests dividing candidates into two categories:

1. Technical candidates - have technical experience in emerging technologies in building and utilising emerging technologies and technical infrastructure.

Examples:
- DevOps / SysOps Engineers
- Principal engineers / software developers
- Experienced data scientists / data engineers
- Artificial intelligence, natural language
- Specialists in artificial intelligence, natural language processing and machine learning (AI, NLP, ML)
- Cybersecurity experts
- Hardware engineers
- Experienced front-end developers
- Operating systems engineers
- Experienced video game developers
- Experienced UX/UI designers
- Experienced mobile app developers
- Experienced back end developers who are leading development or making significant contributions to new technologies or open source projects (e.g. blockchain, Scala, Golang, Elasticsearch, etc.).
- Experience as a CTO or VP of Engineering managing teams of full-time employees in a growing digital business
- Virtual and augmented reality developers

2 Business candidates - have commercial, investment or product expertise in digital product creation, technology product or enterprise development, and a successful track record of investing in growing and promising digital product businesses.

Examples:
- Experience of leading a significant venture capital investment of £25m+
- Experience as a commercial/business leader (P&L, growth, sales and distribution strategy) in a digital business
- Experience of expanding or growing a product-focused digital business
- Industry specific experience e.g. payment infrastructure in FinTech / international expansion in EdTech etc.
- Solution Sales Experts
- Experienced product manager
- Leadership in selling SaaS or enterprise digital services
- Effective marketing experts working in digital companies
- Experienced and senior VC analysts with experience leading digital business investments
- Experience as a senior executive in an SME (CEO, CMO, CIO) or COO in a digital business

Criteria for evaluating a candidate for Global Talent Visa in the IT field

А. The mandatory criterion for this visa category is that you are recognised as a leader in the digital technology sector for the last 5+ years for Exceptional Talent or you must have the potential to be recognised as a leader if you have less than 5 years of experience in the IT industry for Exceptional Promise. Importantly, the length of work experience is now only assessed in the IT field, for example if you have changed careers and have worked in IT recently, you may well qualify for Promise.

Leadership or leadership potential must be confirmed by your employers, customers, investors or other relevant and influential experts/representatives of your industry. A minimum of three letters of recommendation is required.

B. Supporting Criteria (you must select 2 out of 4):

1. Innovativeness. In this criterion, you need to provide evidence that your work has been innovative. For example, you worked as an executive at a technology company or in a new digital industry/over an innovative product.
2. Contribution to the industry outside of your main job. There is evidence of the value of work outside of your main profession that contributes to the industry. For example, you contribute pro bono to an organisation (startup studio, accelerator) as a mentor, run interest groups, teach at a university or societies to promote IT (GitHub profile, conferences, lectures, media articles)
3. Contribution to technical, commercial or entrepreneurial activities as a founder, manager or employee in a technology product company. You should provide information about a project where you took a leadership role and ultimately led it to success. The project must have an impact, solve a problem, and be successful.
4. Contribution to academic research. You need to prove your impact on IT development through academic research, e.g. there is a recommendation from an academic expert.

The difference between Exceptional Talent and Promise is that Promise can provide 1 proof of meeting the stated criterion each, whereas Talent must show a track record of evidence (minimum 2 proofs under the selected criterion).

What documents are required?

You will have 15 documents in total - 3 main letters of recommendation, 10 pieces of evidence of meeting the criteria above (awards, letters, articles, publications, financial documents, speeches, books etc), CV and Personal Statement (this is a cover letter of up to 1000 words describing the contribution you will make to the UK digital technology industry and the motivation for why you have chosen the UK to immigrate to. Overall the letter is a summary of your professional journey. The content should be consistent with the rest of the application and outline the achievements you have attached as evidence).

The United Kingdom (UK) is one of the top five most attractive countries in the world for business development, and obtaining a Global Talent or Startup visa is the shortest route to UK residence permit and citizenship.

Email: info@forcetax.eu