PMQs: Davey urges PM to create visa route to attract high-skilled Americans fleeing Trump

15 Jan 2025

EMBARGO: Immediate Release

At Prime Minister’s Questions today, Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey urged the Prime Minister to create a new visa route so that highly-skilled Americans seeking to flee the Trump presidency can “bring their money and their skills” to the UK, “so we can grow our economy and pay for our public services”.

According to a report in the Financial Times, UK immigration lawyers have received a spike in inquiries from “mobile, wealthy individuals in tech, law and the arts” who are “worried about socially conservative policies that Trump could introduce once in office”.

Under the poorly-designed immigration system introduced by the last Conservative Government in 2020, there are now only two main routes available for people not sponsored by an employer or coming to study in the UK: the “Global Talent” and “High Potential Individual” visas. But both of these have extremely limited criteria, with fewer than 2,700 issued to Americans in total since they were brought in.

When the Conservative Government closed the Investor visa route in 2022 – because Ministers had failed to prevent it being abused to launder money and evade sanctions, especially by Russian oligarchs with links to Vladimir Putin – it promised a new investment-based visa to replace it, but never delivered one.

At Prime Minister’s Questions, Ed Davey said:

“An idea for the Chancellor to grow the economy: as President-elect Trump prepares to take office next week, there are reports that a number of wealthy, highly-skilled Americans are looking to come to the UK for fear of what President-elect Trump will do to their country.

“But because the Conservatives so broke the immigration system, many of them are finding there is no visa that they can apply for.

“Now I know the Prime Minister is rightly seeking to reduce immigration from the record highs of the Conservatives, but does he agree: if people like this want to come to our country, to bring their money and their skills, so we can grow our economy and pay for our public services, they should be able to?”

ENDS

Notes to Editors:

The Financial Times article ‘Liberal Americans consider moving to UK after Trump win, lawyers say’ is available here.

The “Global Talent” visa route is only available to people working in academia or research, arts and culture or digital technology who have been endorsed by a particular body, or who have one of a narrow list of awards.

The “High Potential Individual” route is only available to recent graduates from one of a list of 42 universities around the world.

Total number of visas issued to US citizens under these routes since they were established (main applicants):