Our Experience During the HSMP to Tier 1 Transition

My husband and I decided to apply for HSMP visa back in 2008. As my husband was an IT specialist and had appropriate qualifications we decided that he was going to be the main applicant and I was going to be a dependant. One of our friends recommended the immigration advisor that could help us to apply to the Home Office as our application was outside the country.

After a telephone conversation with the advisor we were fully convinced that we were going to qualify for the points and started preparing all the necessary documents for the visa. We were gathering documents when suddenly we received an email from the advisor which was stating that if we still wanted to apply for HSMP we had to hurry, because on June 30 2008 it was going to be replaced by a new category called Tier 1 General.

Being in a real hurry we completed all paperwork and sent it to the immigration advisor ASAP. We got really lucky (at least we thought so at that time) as we managed to submit our documents for HSMP on time and our application was processed. The only thing that was left was to wait for the decision. It seemed ages when we got the letter in October 2008.

As it turned out it was not what we had expected in the first place. We received so called HSMP approval letter which was valid for 6 months. On account of the fact that HSMP was replaced by Tier 1 Category which was harder to qualify points and had also new requirements we had to update our batch of the documents and re-apply for entry clearance to the local embassy.

We had to qualify for maintenance funds category which was introduced as a new requirement of Tier 1 Category. We had to have £2,800 equivalent for main applicant on the bank account for 90 consecutive days as evidence of sufficient funds and £1,600 equivalent money for each dependant. So the total amount for two of us was £4,400 equivalent which was a huge amount, especially we didn’t plan that as this requirement hadn’t existed before.

The news came a bit of a shock for us. We were so frustrated and thought that we would never be able to meet the criteria. The only good thing was that the HSMP approval letter was valid for 6 months and the money had to be in the account for three months, on the whole we had three months to save that money. So we made a decision to sell some things and receive some amount of money for it, then put it straight to the bank account.

Telling story short with floating currency we had managed to keep the required amount in the bank account for three months. After three months we had had all the appropriate documents and finally we were able to apply for Tier 1 visa to local embassy. We had to pay the reduced fee of £250 for each application. Finally after all trouble we received our Tier 1 General for three years in February 2009.