United Kingdom

The main British work route is Skilled Worker, and the Appendix that governs it says in its own first sentence that it is for employers to recruit people, not for people to move. Nothing can be done without a licensed sponsor: a Certificate of Sponsorship allocated by the Home Office to an approved sponsor for a specific job at a specific salary carries twenty of the fifty mandatory points, and SW 4.4 withholds the salary points altogether if the sponsorship points are not awarded. The salary test is doubled - the applicant must equal or exceed both a cash floor and the published going rate for the occupation code, so a job paying above the floor still fails if it pays below its own going rate. The general floor is £41,700 a year. The lower floors that circulate in guidance are not general: £31,300 and £25,000 belong to options F to K, which reach only health and care jobs, a transitional group granted before 4 April 2024, and listed health and education occupations. A grant runs to fourteen days after the certificate of sponsorship ends, up to five years, and five continuous years lead to settlement.

Joining a British or settled partner is governed by Appendix FM, and the route is long, conditional and expensive before it is anything else. Entry clearance as a partner is granted for an initial period not exceeding 33 months, extended by periods not exceeding 30 months, and settlement comes after a continuous period of at least 60 months. Every grant carries a condition of no recourse to public funds, so the household is excluded from means-tested support for the whole five years while paying the immigration health surcharge for each grant. The money test is the part that decides most cases. A new applicant must show a specified gross annual income of at least 29,000 pounds, or specified savings of 16,000 pounds plus two and a half times the shortfall. But the Appendix still carries the old test alongside the new one: an applicant who first applied before 11 April 2024 and is applying again with the same partner meets a transitional requirement of 18,600 pounds, plus 3,800 pounds for the first child and 2,400 pounds for each additional child. The new threshold has no child element at all, so the two tests cross over: a couple with two children needs 24,800 pounds under the old rule and 29,000 pounds under the new one. English is required at CEFR A1 in speaking and listening at entry, and at settlement the applicant must satisfy Appendix KoLL instead.

The United Kingdom has no investment route. The Tier 1 (Investor) category, which admitted people who placed two million pounds in qualifying investments, is still printed in Part 6A of the Immigration Rules and the paragraph that describes it says in terms that the route is now closed to new applicants; what remains there serves only people who already hold that leave. Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) says the same of itself and points readers at Innovator Founder, which is the only business route open. Innovator Founder is not an investment route either, and this is the fact most likely to surprise a reader: it sets no minimum investment at all. The financial requirement is 1,270 pounds of maintenance funds, held for 28 days, and nothing more. What it asks for instead is an endorsement letter from an approved Endorsing Body confirming a genuine, original, innovative, viable and scalable business, English at CEFR B2 in all four components, and that the applicant plays an active day-to-day role. Permission runs for a maximum of three years, and settlement comes after three years in the country on the route - but only where the endorsing body confirms the business has met at least two of seven achievement criteria, of which fifty thousand pounds invested and actively spent is one option among seven rather than a condition.

There is no way to move to the United Kingdom on a pension. The country once had a category for it - retired persons of independent means, at paragraphs 263 to 270 of Part 7 of the Immigration Rules, with its own provisions for partners and children - and it was closed in 2008. What is unusual is how it was closed. The headings are all still printed in Part 7 today, in the same order, each followed by the single word DELETED: the requirements, the grant, the refusal, the extension, the indefinite leave, and the whole family block at paragraphs 271 to 273E. A reader searching the Rules for retirement finds the route's skeleton and has to notice that every bone of it is empty. Nothing replaced it. The index of Parts and Appendices the Home Office publishes lists more than a hundred routes and none of them admits a person on the basis of pension income, savings or private means, so an older person wanting to live in the United Kingdom reaches it, if at all, through family, through work, through ancestry or through the long residence of a stay that began some other way.

The United Kingdom belongs to no regional free movement arrangement, and it has not since 2020. What it has is older and narrower. Section 1(3) of the Immigration Act 1971 provides that arrival on a local journey from the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man or the Republic of Ireland is not subject to control under the Act, and names those places together with the United Kingdom the common travel area. Section 3ZA, inserted on 31 December 2020 immediately before the Brexit transition ended, goes further for people rather than journeys: an Irish citizen does not require leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom unless they are deported, excluded on conducive-to-the-public-good grounds, or excluded under certain international instruments. An Irish citizen therefore lives and works here without permission of any kind, and needs none to be renewed. For everyone else from the European Economic Area and Switzerland, free movement ended and what replaced it is not a route but a wind-up scheme. Appendix EU grants indefinite leave or five years' limited leave to people who were already here before the end of 2020 and to a defined set of family members joining them. The deadline for applying was 1 July 2021, and an application after it is valid only where the Secretary of State is satisfied there are reasonable grounds for the delay.

Two different twelve-month rules govern driving here and they are in different instruments for different people. A visitor - a person resident outside the United Kingdom and temporarily in Great Britain - may drive on a Convention driving permit or a domestic driving permit issued abroad for twelve months from the date of their last entry, under article 2 of the Motor Vehicles (International Circulation) Order 1975. Someone who becomes resident gets a different and narrower allowance: regulation 80 of the Motor Vehicles (Driving Licences) Regulations 1999 treats the holder of a relevant permit as licensed for one year after becoming resident, but only for small vehicles, motor bicycles and mopeds. After that year a Great Britain licence is needed, and whether it comes by exchange or by taking the test turns on whether the foreign licence is an exchangeable licence as section 108 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 defines it - which means issued in Gibraltar, or in a country the Secretary of State has designated by order. The designation order read for this record is from 1984, designates nine places, and does it under section 110 of the Road Traffic Act 1972, an Act that has since been replaced. legislation.gov.uk serves that order only as it was made and says so on the page. The current list of exchangeable countries is therefore not reconstructable from the instruments read here.

The United Kingdom gives a legal right to a bank account, and it is narrower than it sounds. Regulation 23 of the Payment Accounts Regulations 2015 makes a consumer eligible for a payment account with basic features at a designated credit institution if they are legally resident in the United Kingdom and either hold no comparable account with any United Kingdom credit institution or are ineligible for the institution's ordinary accounts. Legal residence is defined generously at the edges - it expressly includes consumers with no fixed address, asylum seekers, and people who have no residence permit but whose expulsion is impossible for legal or practical reasons - and the institution must verify eligibility unless it relies on the consumer's own declaration. The words "United Kingdom" in that regulation are not original. They were substituted on 31 December 2020 by the Payment Accounts (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019, replacing the European Union: a right that once ran to anyone legally resident anywhere in the Union now runs only to residents here. The account itself must be free: regulation 20 prohibits any fee for the sterling services listed in regulation 19. Separately, every bank must apply customer due diligence when it establishes a business relationship, under regulation 27 of the Money Laundering Regulations 2017, and that is the obligation a newly arrived person meets as a request for documents.

Bringing your household into the United Kingdom is duty-free if you qualify, and the qualifying is done by a document rather than by a statute. Regulation 4 of the Customs (Reliefs from a Liability to Import Duty and Miscellaneous Amendments) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020 says a claim for relief must be granted by HMRC where it is made by reference to a case described in a section of the UK Reliefs document and the goods, the claimant and the eligibility criteria all match that section. Section 1 of that document is the transfer of residence relief. It gives full relief on personal property intended for personal use or household needs, including furniture, linen, cycles, motorcycles, private cars, caravans, pleasure craft, household pets and saddle animals. The conditions are the ones that catch people: normally resident outside the United Kingdom for at least twelve consecutive months, possession and use of the goods for at least six months before ceasing to be resident abroad, everything declared within twelve months of establishing residence here, and nothing lent, hired out or sold for twelve months after import without HMRC's approval. Alcohol, tobacco and commercial vehicles are excluded outright, and prior approval on form TOR1 is required before any of it can be claimed.

A visit to the United Kingdom is governed by the Immigration Rules rather than by an Act. Section 3(2) of the Immigration Act 1971 requires the Secretary of State to lay statements of the rules before Parliament, and Appendix V: Visitor is the statement that regulates visiting. It sorts the world in two, and the two lists do different things. Appendix Visitor: Visa National list names 115 countries and territorial entities whose nationals need entry clearance - a visit visa - obtained before travel for any purpose. Everyone else is a non-visa national and can seek permission to enter at the border. But since 2023 a second and separate requirement has been laid over the top of that: the Electronic Travel Authorisation, which the Appendix ETA National List now extends to most non-visa nationals including the United States, Canada, Australia and, from 2 April 2025, every state of the European Union and the EFTA states. An ETA is not a visa and is not permission to enter; it is permission to travel, valid two years, after which the holder still has to be given permission to enter on arrival. The one European country absent from both lists is Ireland, and that is the Common Travel Area doing its work.

The United Kingdom has no route for a person who can support themselves. Every appendix in the Home Office's own index of the Immigration Rules admits people for a reason other than money: a sponsored job, a talent endorsement, a degree course, a family relationship, a grandparent born here, a cultural exchange with an age limit, a protection need. The two categories that ever came close are both shut. Retired persons of independent means, at paragraphs 263 onwards of Part 7, reads DELETED paragraph by paragraph. Tier 1 (Investor), which admitted people who moved capital here rather than earned income, says in Part 6A that it is now closed to new applicants. What survives for a self-funded person is a business route, Innovator Founder, and it is not a means test either - it asks for an endorsing body's letter about an innovative, viable and scalable venture and for 1,270 pounds. The practical consequence is that income which would qualify someone for residence in most of the countries in this corpus qualifies them for nothing here, and a person with capital and no employer, no sponsor, no British relative and no endorsed business has no application to make.

UK Ancestry is the most-asked British route and the most commonly misdescribed. It is not a route for anyone with a British grandparent. Appendix UK Ancestry opens two gates and a person has to pass both: UKA 1.3 requires the applicant to be a Commonwealth citizen, and UKA 4.1 requires a grandparent born in the UK or Islands. A citizen of the United States, Brazil or any European state with a Birmingham-born grandmother is outside the route at the first gate and nothing in the Appendix lets them in. A third condition is as easily missed: UKA 6.1 requires the applicant to be able to work and to intend to seek and take employment in the UK, so this is a labour-market route and not a retirement one. What it gives is unusually generous: five years' permission with unrestricted work and self-employment, no sponsor, no job offer, no salary threshold, and settlement at the end of the five years.

Since 6 April 2013 the United Kingdom has decided tax residence by a test written into statute rather than by case law, and it is Schedule 45 to the Finance Act 2013. The structure is three-stage and the order matters. An individual is resident for a tax year if the automatic residence test is met or the sufficient ties test is met, and not resident if neither is. The automatic residence test is met when at least one of four automatic UK tests is met and none of the five automatic overseas tests is. Spending 183 days or more in the country is the first automatic UK test, but the second catches a person with a home in the UK and no comparable home abroad, and the third catches full-time work in the UK, each on a day count far below 183. Only when none of the automatic tests decides the year does the sufficient ties test run, and there the number of days needed to become resident falls as the number of UK ties rises: a person who was resident in any of the three preceding tax years and has four ties becomes resident on more than 15 days in the country. The day count itself is a presence-at-midnight rule, and the relief for being stranded is capped at 60 days a year.

Access to the National Health Service in England does not turn on nationality, on insurance or on contributions. It turns on ordinary residence, and on a surcharge paid years in advance with the visa application. The Charges to Overseas Visitors Regulations 2015 define an overseas visitor as a person not ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom, and require an NHS body to charge one for any relevant service unless the Regulations say otherwise. The body must also take the money before treating, except where doing so would prevent or delay an immediately necessary or an urgent service. The exemption most migrants rely on is regulation 10: no charge may be made to a person for whom an immigration health charge has been paid, for the whole period of leave that charge bought. That charge is the Immigration Health Surcharge, set by the Immigration (Health Charge) Order 2015 at an annual amount per year of the maximum leave the application could produce - 1,035 pounds a year for most adults and 776 pounds for students, their dependants, under-18s and the Youth Mobility Scheme since 6 February 2024. A five-year route therefore carries five years of health charge payable up front, and the surcharge is what makes the service free afterwards. Visitors are outside all of this: they pay no surcharge, and regulation 10(3) is explicit that being exempt from the surcharge is not an exemption from being charged for treatment.

Naturalisation as a British citizen is governed by an Act rather than by the Immigration Rules, and the Act is unusually frank about how little it promises. Section 6(1) of the British Nationality Act 1981 says that where the Secretary of State is satisfied the applicant meets Schedule 1, he may, if he thinks fit, grant a certificate. Schedule 1 sets the arithmetic. The ordinary applicant must have been in the United Kingdom at the start of the five years ending with the application, have been absent no more than 450 days across those five years and no more than 90 days in the last twelve months, have been free of any time restriction on their stay throughout that last twelve months, and have been in breach of the immigration laws at no point in the five years. They must also be of good character, have sufficient knowledge of English, Welsh or Scottish Gaelic, and have sufficient knowledge about life in the United Kingdom. The spouse or civil partner of a British citizen applies under section 6(2) instead: three years rather than five, 270 days of absence rather than 450, and the time-restriction test taken on the date of application rather than across a whole year. The requirement to be free of time restrictions is what makes settlement the real gate, and for a person on no other route the settlement gate is ten years of lawful residence under Appendix Long Residence.

Studying in the United Kingdom runs on a sponsorship licence rather than on an enrolment letter. The route is Appendix Student, and the document that starts it is a Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies issued by a licensed student sponsor. On top of that the applicant must hold money: outstanding course fees plus a monthly living figure for up to nine months, which Appendix Student sets at 1,529 pounds a month in London and 1,171 pounds a month outside it, held for 28 continuous days and evidenced to the standard in Appendix Finance, where an overdraft does not count. English is required at CEFR B2 in all four components for a degree-level course and B1 below it. Permission is granted for the length of the course plus a margin set by a table, and it carries work conditions rather than a work prohibition: 20 hours a week in term time for a degree-level student at a provider with a track record of compliance, 10 hours below degree level, and no employment at all for every other kind of study including all part-time study. The sharpest rule is about families. Since 1 January 2024 a dependent partner or child may generally only join a student whose course is a PhD, another doctoral qualification or a research-based higher degree, or a student on a government scholarship.