Memorandum submitted by the Physiological
Society
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on
this area. Our Society is concerned that the present system of
managing migration is not helping the scientific interests of
this country, by inhibiting the long and short term mobility of
highly skilled individuals (Tier 1). As a community, physiology
and biomedicine in general is affected. We hope that the new points
based system will help with this, but feel the need to draw your
attention to current problems which need to be addressed urgently.
In particular, a number of our Members have expressed
concern about the changes to UK visa applications affecting scientists
wanting to enter the UK. As you know, supporting such international
collaboration is vital to our UK science base and recent changes
seem to represent a concrete disincentive.
In brief, visa applications via British consulates,
in several countries, have now been outsourced to a US based company
called World Bridge Services. World Bridge Services is a subdivision
of a California based computer company CSC. An application for
an entry visa to the UK now goes through a website.
http://www.britishembassy.gov.uk/servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/ShowPage&c=Page&cid=1059132502606£contacts
Any request for information requires prepayment
of 14 USD (something that seems rather odd in itself when applying
for a British visa). Our Members have complained that the applicant
is then put through to a call centre where no substantive help
is offered. The outsourced service appears to be unresponsive,
inadequate, undermines UK credibility and has resulted in serious
delays in getting straightforward entry visas for scientific colleagues.
Applicants having to pay to access an information service could
also run the risk of creating a perverse incentive for a commercial
company to provide a poor/opaque service. Apart from the impact
on applicants, we also have some doubts that the new computerised
scheme is saving the tax-payer money.
Cases that we are aware of include that of an
Argentinean postdoc, an ex-Oxford student, who had been working
in Germany for the previous 3 years and is a star researcher with
publications in Nature. Repeated requests for a visa in support
of her work permit for a UK position were not answered, and as
a result she suffered financial loss from the loss of an airfare.
Although she was subsequently granted a visa, she found the process
very harrowing. To quote from her e-mail
" |I never expected any kind of problems
at all. When I went to this commercial company in Dusseldorf to
handle my visa application nobody could tell me in that moment
how long my procedure could take as they say they were *only*
receiving the applications. I could count more than 10 people
(three private security guys, a desk man, a guy who was listing
the people coming, three or four people checking the documentation
in the applications, people taking the biometric information,
etc), to do the job of the former couple of British officers in
the Consulate".
We have also become aware from some of our other
Government contacts, that even some flagship Government funded
schemes promoting international collaboration have been adversely
affected by the above situation, resulting, as one of our contacts
has noted "in some spectacularly embarrassing own goals".
Furthermore, the outsourcing of such an important function to
a foreign company, and the fact that payment is not made in either
Sterling or Euros, could also be seen as sending an unfortunate
message to the rest of the world concerning the integrity of UK
sovereignty.
So we would be grateful if you could look into
this policy of outsourcing visa applications, and the processes
used by the company, as we believe that the UK is at risk of losing
many able researchers. One possible way forward may be to set
up a fast track system for academic visas with the company.
July 2008
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