In a move that can be read as an India-friendly attribute of the first Indian-origin British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the UK government gave sanction to 3000 Indian visas for the young professionals who will be allowed to live and work in the country for two years.
India is getting the benefit according to the UK-India Migration and Mobility partnership that had been signed last year.
The office of the UK PM in a tweet said, “Today the UK-India Young Professionals Scheme was confirmed, offering 3,000 places to 18-30-year-old degree-educated Indian nationals to come to the UK to live and work for up to two years.”
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India reportedly is going to be the first visa-national country to have the facilities of such a scheme.
As per the Young Professional Scheme, reciprocally India and the UK will offer 3000 visas to respective young professional to live and work for two years in the other country.
A statement from the Downing street said, “The launch of the scheme is a significant moment both for our bilateral relationship with India and the UK's wider commitment to forging stronger links with the Indo-Pacific region to strengthen both our economies.”
It also added that the link of India and the UK is closer than any country in the Indo-pacific region. On one hand, a quarter of the all international students coming to the UK belongs to India; on the other, Indian investment gives job to around 95000 people in the country.
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Strict Rules for Immigration offenders
However, the statement from the UK PMO also raised concerns over the illegal immigration and said that it would remove the immigration offenders who are extending their stay.
“A landmark Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the UK and India in May 2021 aimed at increasing mobility between our countries, returning those with no right to be in the UK and India respectively and sharing best practice on organised immigration crime,” the statement notes.
This position of the UK PMO is in tandem with what the recently appointed Home Secretary Suella Braverman claimed earlier. Braverman pointed out that Indians overstay their Visas and noted that the UK government is determined to stop it.
The Visa grant after Sunak met Modi?
Notably, the directives from the UK PMO on the sanctions of Visa came hours after Indian PM Narendra Modi met his the UK counterpart in the sidelines of the 17th G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia. India is going to assume the presidency of this powerful group from December 6 onwards.
The content of the informal meeting between Modi and Sunak though haven’t come out yet, it is expected that the bilateral trade relations must have taken crucial position as since the turmoil hit the UK politics, India has been waiting to clinch the Free Trade Agreement deal that earlier had a deadline of Diwali.
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India-UK already have a trading relationship of whooping 24 billion pounds and the signing of FTA will push the ease of doing business and give the UK an edge over other countries to invest in India.
