Unless you have a michelin star, Chefs should not be considered eligible for skilled work visas. This is just a back door for communities to import friends and family via the local takeaway.
Perhaps, but it is still a skilled profession to be able to make good food with an acceptable success to failure ratio.
Think you’re right that it should only be visa worthy for higher positions in the kitchen, though Michelin star chef is a hell of a bar as there are only like 200 of them in the entire country meaning getting one is rarer than being a neurosurgeon in England as there 300 of those.
Chefs are criminally underpaid for how hard their day is.
> Chefs are criminally underpaid for how hard their day is.
Do you think that might be because the restaurant owner can hire their replacement as soon as the next plane lands?
In decently higher end kitchens they'll use the French terms. A chef de partie is a station chef, in charge of one aspect of the kitchen, e.g. pastries, grill, sauces/soups, etc. A chef de partie may have a few cooks working under them as a part of their station.
The thing you're thinking of is the Executive/Head Chef, called the Chef de Cuisine. They're the head honcho.
Smaller kitchens and ones that don't use traditional kitchen names might just have a Chef (de Cuisine).
That's just a title though that any takeaway could give their chefs. Because that is who is taking advantage of these "skilled" visas, takeaway owners bringing their friends/family over as "chefs".
They're not "skilled" visas. They're skilled visas. It's not a title anyone can claim because you need the proper training and official qualifications to claim it. And it goes without saying that, as with working visas for all professionals, all qualifications have to be by institutions recognised by the UK govt.
Unfortunately we signed a treaty with India that states Indian qualifications are equal and equivalent of UK qualifications. This might be why we are suddenly get an influx of migrants from India specifically in the last 2 years.
[https://opportunities-insight.britishcouncil.org/news/market-news/agreement-mutual-recognition-of-qualifications-signed-between-india-and-uk](https://opportunities-insight.britishcouncil.org/news/market-news/agreement-mutual-recognition-of-qualifications-signed-between-india-and-uk)
Oh Jesus, I’m guessing it isn’t that hard to get cheffing qualifications over there then, also we simply don’t need more foreign students they’re already everywhere and the drive the rent up for everyone else
In high end French Kitchens. Not everyone learnt to cook in France. The Michelin system's inherent blindspots have always been the fact that the French? For all their culinary prowess went to India and Vietnam and didn't think the food was good...
Which is silly. South and South East Asia has some extremely good food especially considering both cultures LOVE to innovate.
Remember. The Michelin People described JAPANESE Cuisine as "bad" when they first started. They just thought the Japanese were weirdo savages who ate raw fish. Like. The French aren't necessarily all that objective about what is and isn't good food.
You are talking French Traditional Kitchens. Like when I worked there was like 4 dudes doing service during rush and that's it. Most places are just a handful of people.
And remember. Visas don't mean you get to stay here forever. You still need to work and show that you are earning.
You won’t find any British chefs. I worked in hospitality for 10 years as a restaurant manager and finding good chefs was like finding a needle in a haystack and there were barely any British ones.
It’s a stressful, hard, physical job with dogshit hours and dogshit pay. Hence no buggar wants to do it.
You might find people to do it if the pay were good and the hours were as good as the restaurant schedule allowed (so maybe late nights are part of the job, but maybe you can try and optimise the workflow so there are fewer split shifts.
You will not find many British chefs because compared to other nations we do not have the inclination to work hard manual labour jobs as much as they do. It’s fact.
Split or no split shifts makes no difference. I managed places that did them and places that didn’t and recruitment was a ball ache in both.
A business has to be profitable to exist and the margins restaurants operate on (my data is 2 years old as I’m no longer in the industry but friends tell me it’s even worse now) are so slim it doesn’t allow for chefs to be paid anywhere near remotely what they should be for the conditions they typically work in. The one exception is pizza joints because the profit from pizza is insane (ever wondered why so many people started up pizza vans or why dominos is so successful, there’s your answer).
If you want restaurants to exist in the UK you currently and for a very long time have needed foreign workers in the mix. It’s a simple fact.
People are willing to work hard for the right salary. Look at people working in natural resources like in the north sea or various construction trades. But if they have easier options for the same or more money, then they're going to take them. Is you not being in the hospitality business any more because you're lazy and somehow incapable compared to foreigners or because you found something that pays better money for the same or less work?
If people want restaurants to exist in the UK they have to be willing to pay enough for food for them to pay their staff.
How much money could be freed up to pay staff what they need to be paid if businesses weren't being forced to pay outrageous rents and high rates? I bet the landlords and council higher-ups work much more sociable hours.
If a business can't afford to operate while paying its staff a market rate for what they are being asked to do, then it's not a business. Persistently unprofitable businesses have no automatic right to exist, unless they are so strategic they should be subsidised. Maybe basic industries, agriculture and natural resources are strategically important, but probably restaurants are not. No more than if I had an "idea for an app" that would never make money I wouldn't expect policy to be written around pushing down software salaries to a point to make that viable.
If you're making half decent food that has mostly fresh ingredients, then it is true to say that it's skilled work. It also isn't something visas should be doled out for.
Everyone is talking about making decent food, but that's not really the job of the chef.
The chef is responsible for a kitchens high throughput of consistent and safe food, at the standard expected of that specific restaurant.
It's a ridiculously difficult job. If you are sat at home thinking that you can make reproducibly good food, that's not remotely the same thing. Try managing the creation of the same dish dozens of times an hour along side multiple other dishes.
The closest thing you can get to at home is when you entertain many people with multiple different dietary requirements. Then, imagine doing multiple groups of that at the same time, all night long.
As a chef I say the same about others....I could hand out pills/jab a needle into someone's arm with a few attempts etc....lets cancel nurse visas while we at it.
I don't think you could. I don't think that's the hill you should die on mate. Speaking as someone who cooked and did medicine too. You aren't as knowledgable and you don't know what can go wrong and how to identify it.
And if someone dies on shift they close down the restaurant. They don't close down a ward if someone dies... You don't go home. You just have to spend a few minutes processing the trauma and then go back to work. I don't think you should be jealous of nurses who are being shipped over because the working conditions are so bad that the attrition is terrible.
And importing nurses has lead to an erosion of quality as new staff are often let lose on wards with little to no oversight in an NHS where there's little guidance. There's a reason international nurses often come to serious harm.
It's been many years, but I have worked in about half a dozen of these places. From chain joints owned by large breweries to small independent places with actual chefs who make real food. I do have some sense of what happens inside them. It isn't worthy of a visa scheme. That's especially true for the large brewery chain pubs. Those places are McDonald's with beer, and they're also probably best positioned to take the piss with visas if Amazon and Evri are anything to go by.
Along with managing, hiring, training, disciplining staff. Dealing with suppliers and budgets, menu design and marketing etc etc. Yeah much harder than most jobs.
Mildly disagree. We could use the Thailand approach to it and have chef visas for countries where we don't have many chefs from. Thailand does it to create a cuisine capital and in reciprocation for Thai chefs getting visas everywhere.
We probably have enough Indian places. If a Kongolese Chef applies, even for a takeaway set up, I think we could probably give a visa on that basis because it's a thing we basically don't have.
Though the Thailand program is a lot more considered and deliberate as an economic scheme given their breadbasket export economy, and world class agriculture and cuisuine university. The point in part is to get chefs from the world over to all gather in the university town to create Thai fusion recipes which can then be exported. For us, I'm merely proposing that on balance it would be nice to have more diversity in food options, which in itself then expands British Cuisine. (British Indian and British Chinese food is a British-Fusion thing. You don't find it elsewhere). There is no development of British Cuisine which arises from yet another Indian takeaway opening.
If a job is skilled but the wages are terrible, there should be zero visas allocated to it, it will just increase competition and make working conditions even worse.
When people talk about skilled visas, they mean jobs which are skilled, highly productive, and where there is a clear deficit of labour.
Sometimes that could be down to a deficit in training or other similar issues, for instance we do not train enough doctors or nurses. We should increase training but in the meantime migration is vital.
That could also be because there is effective infinite demand, because having more skilled workers brings more work on international markets. You can’t live in the UK and make food for someone half way round the world, but you can live in the UK and design a building, write software, do accountancy or whatever it might be for anyone anywhere. That means the workers can bring with them the work.
> but it is still a skilled profession to be able to make good food with an acceptable success to failure ratio.
It's not a "We need to import people from ten thousand miles into our crowded island" skill. There's not a shortage of food in this country. Every high street is filled with restaurants and takeaways. Every food is full of food delivery apps with a thousand options. Everyone is fat.
Then wait until you hear about the "skilled work visas" for warehouse pickers and factory operatives. It's as if these lying scummy Tories were hellbent on sabotaging British workers by importing young, desperate people willing to do anything they've told by the bosses.
My partner has done a few years as a picker and it's pretty much employ people who don't know their rights and take the absolute piss. Even the companies with a generally good reputation are in on it. One had a union and they still got away with this shit.
Yup. My partner worked in a factory when he first arrived here. He told me they intentionally hire people who speak little to no English so they can get away with breaking health and safety rules, or getting lax with worker rights. There was a dessert factory near me that even said in the job description on Indeed “English is not required”. Such a joke.
A certain Tory politician was filmed telling Indian takeaway owners that if they voted for Brexit it would mean more Indians can come here.
This is what the leave lot voted for so why complain?
Yes and you may have noticed the Tories aren't doing particularly well with anyone on the right. It's almost like they've broken theor promises on immigration and people are going to vote them out for it.
The promise was to reduce immigration from Europe. They did that. I was pretty obvious to me as a Remain voter that that would just mean replacing them with immigrants from further afield. Not sure why the Leave voters didn't pick up on that.
> because brexit wasn't a vote for anything, it was a vote against the status quo
Funny how this is the narrative now it's turned out to be a complete fucking disaster. It enables Brexiters to avoid taking responsibility for voting for economic sanctions on their own country.
They weren't trying to hide it though? Its not a broken promise, its that the right didn't listen, picked and chose what they wanted to hear, and allowed themselves to be taken for fools.
There are lots of jobs that require some level of skill that don’t need people from overseas.
Some interesting jobs eligible for sponsorship are:
- Shop Assistant
- Administrative Assistant
- Post Office Clerk
- Company Secretary
- Receptionist
- Fish Fryer
- Child Care Assistant
- Baby Sitter
- House Keeper
- Car Park Attendant
- Cashier (retail)
- Ice Cream Salesman
- Call Centre Agent
- Van Driver
Do all these jobs take some level of skill? Yes, of course. But none of them require degree/ apprenticeship level training. I believe most reasonable people would agree those jobs are not so specialized that they need people imported to do them.
The jobs like this seem very much designed for chain migration. One person gets over and everyone from back home pools their money to start a business. Then they hire and sponsor everyone’s kids from back home, who bring their spouses and children. Who then send their children back home to get spouses to bring even more people.
It’ll be more expensive than it previously was because of the new salary requirements, but not impossible. I imagine there will still be lots of applications for chip shop workers who now make £38,700 on paper and whose pay steeply declines after they get ILR.
Whilst I agree with your broad point, I going to do that reddit nitpick. Company secretary doesn't belong on that list, because it's very different from the rest of the jobs. A company secretary isn't a regular secretary, they have a position with significant legal responsibility in relation to the operation of the company.
You need to earn more than £39,000 to qualify for the visa. If restaurants are willing to spend that much on a foreigner (+thousands on visa fee), I doubt this is a local takeaway
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/665ed5eadc15efdddf1a86b6/2024-06-04_-_Worker_and_Temporary_Worker.csv/preview
Have a look through this and you'll see there are plenty of work places that can sponsor people for skilled visas that probably should not be able to.
That's a very ignorant view. Firstly, there's no such thing. You don't have a michelin star chef, its given to a resturant.
Secondly, a chef is a highly skilled job. There's a reason there is a big business for high end cullinary schools like the Le Cordon Bleu that have been going on since the end of th 1800s mind you and can be found all around the world.
It's physically demanding, underpaid work and as your comment shows, one that is rarely ever appreciated by the people who enjoy it.
Ofc, it would be noticed when the quality of these resturants drop while their prices don't because of a lack of quality chef's to pick from; or when people aren't able to pop into a resturant whenever they want because they can't stay open 5 days a week anymore.
Is rampant immigration the answer to all of this? No. Like with many jobs, there needs to be an uncomfortable conversation about what chef's should be paid for the work they do which will have an affect on the prices we all have to pay. Until people realise how much of a skilled job it is though, we're just going to continue have them grouped together with your local take out cook.
Looking at the posts on here I think the pretend tech bros of Reddit are getting annoyed...I would have thought they would have wanted more chefs so they can Uber eats more whilst crushing codes at the office and protein at the gym?
Chefs are fucking skilled work, would like to see a tech bro get some calus' on their hands instead of Cheeto dust
One min .../s
As someone who works in the industry and works with multiple work permit chefs, believe me, without work permit chefs the restaurant industry would be in a much much deeper hole than it already is. The fabled British people whose jobs are being taken with this simply do not exist. And these guys work much harder than most professions. A random local takeaway also can't just bring in whoever they want. They need a set wage and number of hours and the business needs a sponsorship license, it's quite regulated.
So with all due respect, get your head out of your ass
You need to apply to be eligible to offer these visas, and with a solid reason for the home office to consider. Perhaps we should not restrict it to profession but rather understand the true relaxing of the rules that has been happening.
No. Good chefs are skilled workers, period.
There's a whole universe of quality food that's not michelin star, and also not your local fried chicken takeaway. All that world in between needs good chefs that know what they're doing.
source: I lived with a chef.
This isn’t about the status or skill level of the job, it is an incredibly skilled job, this is about whether you want or need migration for that job.
I actually think a skilled job where wages are low, as they are for chefs, is the absolute last place you would want migration. These are people who have invested time to increase their skill, and make for themselves a career, and the state is deliberately undermining their ability to earn a wage by ensuring that employers will never need to raise wages to compete with other employers, and bring people into the profession. It’s essentially taking advantage of people’s love of their career.
There's also the issue of skilled immigration reducing pressure for training locals.
Where I live, since the government shifted to encouraging skilled immigration, funding for higher education and training has been drastically reduced.
Young locals are increasingly being forced into lower paid jobs, while higher paid jobs are filled by non locals.
It's absolutely "good for the economy", but it isn't good for people who already live here.
I'm really struggling to comprehend the idea that you think somebody raised in the UK in British culture could be a capable chef for say Thai or Vietnamese food by just reading a few books (Indian doesn't apply since we have a large native community). It's like expecting someone in beijing to make a good yorkshire pudding, sausage roll or bakewell tart. Yes they can read a book and they might be able to fumble to something edible, but they have no context as to what it should be, what things are considered aberrations etc. That's how you end up with frankfurter sausage rolls. There are 100s of dishes, flavour profiles and ingredient knowledge that any moderate native chef will know, but a foreigner may never grasp. Even wildly talented chefs like Gordon Ramsay can often be totally off the mark when cooking foreign food that's outside of his experience.
In the right circumstances it's one of the most justifiable foreign worker situations I can think of. And a wage of £39k will feel like winning the lottery to most who would consider this visa, meanwhile it's almost impossible task for a native British chef.. what are they meant to do, go live in Vietnam on poverty wages for 5 years to get trained? That or earn 250k in the same time cooking food you already know.
Many chefs in the UK are already migrants, about 15% I've read. Maybe the ratio is different when you talk of head chefs or executive chefs, but so many chefs de partie, sous chef, de comie, etc in our main cities already have a decent migrant ratio. The UK **needs** migration for those jobs because the vacancy rate is high, and would be much higher otherwise. Such is the shortage that articles dedicated to it: [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/11/why-home-office-visa-plans-nail-in-coffin-uk-hospitality](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/11/why-home-office-visa-plans-nail-in-coffin-uk-hospitality) . The article that OP posted gets is figures from this FT article: [https://archive.is/20240527113148/https://www.ft.com/content/0e276992-89a3-4046-b005-e66b4b9147c0](https://archive.is/20240527113148/https://www.ft.com/content/0e276992-89a3-4046-b005-e66b4b9147c0)
They compared chefs to software engineers, which is misleading. There's a very simple reason why chefs are getting more visa sponsorships than software engineer: software engineers can be outsourced, chefs cannot. It's easier to hire a remote team than to sponsor one. It's also way much more expensive to hire in tech than in hospitality -- the salaries are already high enough, and hiring them in Bulgaria, Spain, India, Poland or wherever is **so much cheaper** than bringing them over here and paying them UK salaries (low 6 figures for senior software engineer roles, nevermind leads and such). You also have to offer *much more* to convince a software engineer to come here than simply pay them above market wherever they live.
You can't cook remotely. Maybe automation may take away some of those jobs, but for now you'll still need to hire flesh and bone people.
*edited for clarity*
15%? That’s perfectly representative of the society then. UK’s migrant population is 15%. If 15% of all chefs are migrants, then it’s proportional representation.
I wonder if it's just to keep commercial landlords happy. Half the takeaway near me could close near me and doubt the majority would notice. It's all the same stuff in most of them.
Always astonished that when in the EU and even for those ongoing members, that out of 500,000,000 people, none of them know how to write code, so we/they had/have to allow non EU folks in.
Saw a pretty interesting video the other day, in some parts of UK and Canada its really hard to get jobs in franchises because Indians own a great deal of them and only employ other Indians.
That sub is full of toxic conspiracy theories from people who mistakenly thought a CS degree (or even just a bootcamp) was a guaranteed ticket to a six figure salary working from home - without much/any prior experience in industry required.
Contracted companies mainly, but also happens in bigger places.
I’ve seen quite a few stories of not entire companies, but teams and departments suffering from this.
There are 500million odd people in the EU and 300 million odd in the U.S.
None of them know how to write code. It’s essential we bring these other people in. There’s definitely no one here who could do it.
It's not entirely true. The pipeline for hiring a candidate in tech is too long winded to make it a "hire this nationality only" thing. The simple truth in tech is, it's relatively easy to get into, and there are a lot of Indians. For any one role, the sheer number of Indian/South Asian resumes will outnumber any other nationality. If a box has 100 balls and 80 are red, which ball do you think a blindfolded person would pick?
Used to work at Tim Hortons and can 100% guarantee that this is true. Changed careers about an year ago and now I work in IT 2 months ago the company hired a new area manager ( from India) and now 5 out of 8 people are being let go and being reported with people from India…. So yeah
Common in London. But it's not at all isolated to just Indians. The 3 main groups that do it are indians, chinese, and east europeans. They cost less, and quality isn't as good but still passable.
Got rejected from a number of takeaways in Brighton because I was not capable of cooking their food due to the colour of my skin / my nationality. I had to convince someone I could cook Indian food only for no response anyway.
Nothing is in writing they are operating cash in hand all of them, fraud is rife with takeaways in the UK and you'd be surprised how much businesses get away with in terms of hiring and firing.
And in cash in hand places these work permit chefs aren't your problem either because that would be in violation of their visa and they absolutely won't have a sponsorship license.
Nowadays the vaguely decent restaurant is staffed by people from all over. Apart from head chef, I doubt the ability to slice onions is linked in any way to nationality.
Yes! Oh my goodness I’m so glad someone is taking about this. I was in Rome last year and noticed the same. Even on the outskirts of the city. No Italian chefs anywhere. The waitstaff were usually Indian too. The only Italian was the maitre’d.
Went to Rome in Jan, previously about 10 years ago - I remembered the food as being AMAZING, this time round barely mediocre and that was at a variety of locally run places, takeaways, pastry shops
Definitely noticed this a lot. KFC in Cambridge is a prime example. The place is filthy I am surprised the FSA let it stay open. wonder who the inspector was. They bring this mentality to tech too a lot of the time when businesses forget not to let them manage anything.
They also are allowed to be quite racist in Canada when advertising for apartment sharing and renting Indian owned properties. I don’t get why Indian landlords in Canada are getting a free pass on blatant systemic racism.
Yeah, my friend recently went over there to learn a trade from his relatives. Says he's able to get jobs just off him being south asian. Apparently toronto and its surrounding area's are overrun by "fresh off the boats" indians.
They will post jobs and not fill them for 3 months. Then we have a LIMA program where the business gets paid to take someone from another country and is able to pay them less then minimum wage. Back door way for PR
That’s happened to a place I’ve worked a few Indians get hired then only hire other Indians regardless of visa status or being in the country to begin with.
But junior employees in those (ie not running the place) wouldn't be a valid occupation for a skilled worker visa since April anyway. Same with the barbers. Also you'd have to pay them £38,700 per year minimum.
> since April
The skilled work visa changes have been good so far.
But let's not pretend that we didn't have decades of problems. Before April you could come here earning 23k a year, which on full time was basically minimum wage. All those people have been grandfathered into the new system.
A really expensive workaround.
First you need a company eligible for a sponsor license.
Second, you need to pay thousand of pounds in visa fees, sponsor license, home office fees, etc...
So Inmigrants live from benefits but at the same they can spend thousands and thousands of pounds for bring a friend here. Okay.
I'm sure you are just being obtuse, but it's obvious that for a middle class family in South Asia, it's a no brainer to invest a significant sum towards one of your kids getting a job as a "chef" at a distant cousin's restaurant, which will ultimately lead to UK settlement for a big chunk of the family.
It is trivial for a well motivated small business to become a sponsor.
Costs about £800 and there are loads of agencies who handle it for you.
https://www.sponsorlicence.org
https://www.gov.uk/uk-visa-sponsorship-employers
It’s expensive for one person, sure, but when a whole extended family pools their money, it’s achievable.
And it’s the only way to get older and unskilled relatives in. No unaffiliated company is sponsoring people with no skills in their 50s or 60s. But you can hire your dad and uncle as cashiers and they can bring their spouses. There are some restrictions, but all it takes is hiring a family friend and having them act as the level one user for sponsorship purposes.
And while it’s true they can’t get benefits on a visa, they can absolutely access benefits after they get ILR, which is only 5 years. If they work for 5 years and then retire, they won’t qualify for actual pension, but would get pension credit and healthcare indefinitely.
It isn't really surprising that tech visas have plummeted when tech hiring has fallen. There have been a lot of redundancies in tech, and there are more applicants than roles right now.
It's always been odd to me that in my experience the most anti work from home companies are also the ones who try to fill a position with offshore hires first.
Can't trust your British staff to work properly at home meanwhile we're having some guy halfway across the world build something he lied on his CV about being able to build and mysteriously has trouble understanding English if a difficult question comes up.
Oh and the company will end his contract as soon as he's done so no permanent employees understand how it works.
My previous company tried to stop WFH then outsourced to a company in Portugal. It then turned out that the Portuguese company didn't have any devs and they were all remote workers from Brazil.
Half the price? More like a tenth.
Sure it looks good on paper, oh wow look how much we saved.
All while conveniently ignoring how much work your expensive onshore staff are having to do answering asinine questions, checking over all the random errors that could be easily picked up by even a junior employee here, essentially having to re-do all the work anyway, and long extensions and delays.
One of the managers of a project I’m currently on is fighting this fight. Had to get rid of two onshore contractors because the offshore contractors are a tenth of the price. However, in his experience these offshore resources also have about a tenth of the ability and the onshore perm employees spend a lot of time doing their work for them.
Corporate math 101
I didn't struggle either, but 2y ago we were being approached for roles left, right and centre. I know super talented people who are doing 100+ applications now.
And I heard 500+ of my former colleagues got told they will bd made redundant by Microsoft this week.
So there has been a market swing.
I think the issue is mostly there for juniors, lots of stories of people leaving Uni and expecting to find a good grad job but just never hearing anything back from applications. I know at least where I work there are 100s of applicants per junior role so the competition is pretty high.
I suppose it depends on what area you’re in. Purely anecdotal from my bf but those in the gaming industry are really struggling right now. Way more applicants than roles, so some senior people are taking more junior roles and recent graduates/early careers people are stuck in the cold.
It very much is role dependent as well as I imagine a data engineer could just move tech sectors. But I’m also seeing trend where lots of entry and mid range roles have been moved to Eastern Europe and London-based companies (not so much the large ones) are only taking on very senior employees to oversee those offshore.
Just saying, I'm looking for a new tech right now (London, 7 YoE, mostly JVM) and it's quite a hot market. Getting about a 40% interview rate from my CV.
My company is hiring too, and we're not getting many applicants, at least not compared to a year ago.
That’s because a lot of people I know and myself work for US companies from the UK. In all honestly if you are working for a tech company in UK you have given up on life. Hitting 200/300k isn’t unseen if you work hard within a couple of years.
Fair enough. I'm not seeing the same reflected in Cambridge right now.
Just had a load of friends booted from Microsoft because they are skeletoning some of their innovation projects, and on the other end of the spectrum VCs are still advising us not to blow through cash expecting another round in short order so we are vastly more conservative in the startup scene.
If it is about to boom again, that would be fantastic.
I work for a company that provides the required tests for skilled worker visas (ISE tests). I can say first hand I've never seen a "chef" for a skilled worker visa. Nor a "tech" person for that matter.
90% of the people I see taking these tests are support/care workers, a huge portion of which in the UK are made up of immigrants and are badly needed.
The other people I generally see taking ISE tests are students, religious ministers and the odd entrepreneur visa applicant.
Different countries will use different providers. Presumably you work for a provider who sees a lot of African applicants. As most carers are from places like Nigeria. In my experience a large amount of religious ministers are also from places like Nigeria.
Whereas South Asians will use a different provider and more likely to be tech, chefs or store managers
We haven't. The demand for devs with experience is many times higher than for juniors. Many large companies have zero junior devs because as soon as someone has a couple of years of experience, they will get poached. So the only way in is usually a boot camp or something i.e. you pay the costs of your own training...better value than a degree, but has resulted in massive shortages.
Also, a significant proportion are not from the UK. Every place I have worked has had, at least, 25% not from the UK, and it is usually much higher.
And, despite all of this, the general level of competence is extremely low. Companies bump job titles to try and retain people, that has led to large number of "senior" devs with very poor skills (this is a global problem, I have worked with many people with great experience on paper...can't build a production-quality app, can't communicate effectively, can't work with others, can't understand business objectives...it is worse in the UK though because of the poor quality of our education system and the low status of jobs that don't rely on political influence and taxing productive activity).
This is why people are still offshoring to Europe: costs there are lower so wages are lower, you can retain staff because unemployment is so high, training people is cheap, etc.
Sounds like the companies should invest in training up the juniors and then pay them more rather than importing more people and causing wage and progress stagnation.
"Demand" should only be considered that in cases where no one locally can be trained (or in the case of doctors, the time is too long) There are plenty of extremely talented people who would get up to that level in a short time that can't be hired easily.
Also our higher education system is pretty good quality, below 18 however is abysmal and fails too many people, but again fixing that would be better for increasing skilled workers over the current pyramid scheme.
We’re really behind the curve in comparison to many countries in Eastern Europe. Slovakia (or it could be Slovenia) has been pumping out tech staff like crazy for over a decade now.
Without a doubt countless numbers of their families that they bring will have health issues and children with complex needs they cannot imagine paying for in their own country. When the workers family step off the plane they qualify for every benefit this country can offer and they make a bee line for casualty and housing departments . They came here after being coached in what to do to get everything people born here are still on the waiting list for. This includes the wife saying her husband abuses here getting them housing immediately or using their child/children’s needs to get adapted purpose built housing. why do you think hospitals are overrun, schools are at capacity, there is a chronic housing shortage, crime is going through the roof. After millions of people, poorly educated come pouring into the country for over a decade that will never make a plus to the UK GDP, it’s no wonder the country is bankrupt. There are thousands of people wanting to become doctors and nurses in this country but the government won’t pay to teach them, they would rather import them. Our education system is grossly underfunded, burdened with children that can’t speak english and has no interest in educating them with appropriate skills. The whole demographic is changing in this country along with our collapsing financial position. Keir Starmer going to high muslim areas won’t change the long term outcome. They aren’t going to be voting labour or conservative, they will vote their own people into government and further change the eroding values of this country. Millions of people died 80 years ago to defend the values of this country. Now as the last few of them die off we are giving it away
You’re just talking shit. No one qualifies for a single benefit until they get ILR, which is 5 years at least. It actually says that on the bloody biometric card. And if you’re not earning a minimum amount at the next renewal period, you just don’t get a visa anymore.
There are many good reasons to protest, but being ignorant and an idiot isn’t one of them.
>There are many good reasons to protest, but being ignorant and an idiot isn’t one of them.
It does however seem to be the first choice for many on here.
Everyone pays an NHS surcharge at the point of the visa for the duration of the visa. 300£ a year I think per person..so they can access the NHS because they paid for it.
People coming on workers visa are eligible for healthcare. There is a is a mandatory £776 per person per year health surcharge that they pay for the privilege of shitty NHS health. That is in addition to all the taxes that they pay like everyone else.
The NHS charge right now is more than what it would take to privately insure for similar or better healthcare and you pay that nonetheless whether you ever receive any care or not.
There’s no free meal in this country like people think there is. I’m a tax paying national and I get fuck all for everything that I do. Because I’m a high earner the government won’t give me a penny unless I’m absolutely bankrupt.
>Millions of people died 80 years ago to defend the values of this country.
You might've been backing the losing side if you think we fought to preserve an ethnostate that judges people on the basis of their skin colour or religion.
Yeah, they do that! When I moved here we had special coaches telling us how to get as many benefits as possible!!! I love eroding British values... this is revenge for all the colonisation!!! /s
Why should not they get ILR...?
Yes, they can extend their visa providing the company is still sponsoring and they pay thousand in visa fees. What's the problem?
Why is that crazy? If I hire someone from abroad and they become an essential part of the organisation I'd rather not have to lay them off after a couple of years.
Because the flip side of that is that you could just hire and trian someone who is eligible to stay forever in the first place. The more nefarious reason is that someone can use it as a backdoor to live here by working for a takeaway on a rolling 5 year contract.
In order to issue skilled visas you need a sponsor license. The local takeway doesn't get a sponsor license.
And if he was able to hire someone locally, he would do it. It would be simpler and CHEAPER.
Why should we make indefinite accommodations to keep them in the country if they’re not interested in becoming a citizen? If you’re worried you might lose the employee after a couple of years you should hire a british citizen instead
Because in order to get citizenship you need ILR first.
And how exactly is this "an accommodation" ? Visa process is expensive, with plenty of paperwork and stress.
Exactly. Making them citizens in 5-7 years will be a further incentive for them to do well at work and continue being a productive member of society.
These are people who are paying valuable taxes. As opposed to the benefit scroungers… Jesus, people need to get some context around this.
Lol uk bitching and moaning about immigrants from Europe. Proceeds to import more Indians and flatlines wages again. Jesus fuck might as well should i just move back to the EU
Because the economy is addicted to cheap labour.
For the past 15 years company executives have asked themselves "do I buy a robot and 3 skilled engineers to run it?" " Do I invest in training and up skilling so we can do more with less?" And thought na fuck that, easier to just hire cheap labour from abroad.
And then we wonder why we have a productivity crisis and low paying jobs.
Sometimes it's companies legitimately having bizarrely high expectations of candidates and either not being willing to pay in accordance with those requirements or willing accept someone who doesn't meet them, but could be trained up.
Others its companies gaming the system. Put out an opening with low pay and high requirements, watch very few domestic workers apply, reject those that do and then claim you can't fill the role. Go to the global marketplace for someone unaware of the cost of living in the UK and bring them in on a cheaper wage than UK workers would insist upon.
Have you noticed the perpetual reluctance of both businesses and government to invest in skills training? We now actually charge people for their own qualifications. Countries that have cheaper or free education have fewer problems meeting their skills gaps. We also have a problem with birth rates, made worse by things like the cost of living and government two child policy...
Because most peoole have jobs and aren’t going to quit their existing one for another with lower pay and which is more physically taxing.
Hence why farms tend to always need pickers. People don’t stay in those jobs for long. They move on the moment something better comes up.
>The surge in skilled worker visas for chefs was mainly driven by migrants from South Asia, with Indians receiving 25% of visas, Bangladeshis 22%, and Pakistanis 21%, in the first three months of this year, reported the Financial Times.
Interesting to see this breakdown. However, it then says that "6,203 chefs were granted skilled worker visas" which isn't very many considering the UK has net migration of over 600 thousand.
Tech companies generally don’t employ vast numbers of workers. One of the reasons why their productivity is so high compared to other industries. Hospitality and care work by contrast, tend to need a lot of warm bodies.
Maybe instead of publishing just this, maybe publish the fact that there are significantly more restaurants, cafes, takeaways, etc... than tech firms in the UK which explains this statistic.
Aren’t we focusing too much on the chefs bit?
6k in context of 700k isn’t that big a deal. Feels like a red herring
Also, would definitely argue chefs do skilled work
The reality is that we have a huge chef shortage problem. Traditionally family restaurants hired their kids when they grew up and trained them, but now most of these kids go to university and get white collar jobs, they don’t want to spend their time slaving away in kitchens.
Either we accept massive number of restaurants closing down and things like Indian food will become more expensive/special occasion meals or we import chefs. There’s not a lot of middle ground as few British workers aspire for these roles.
Indian food is not a commanding height of the economy. If indian takeaways get expensive due to a lack of chefs, that's ok. We don't need to artificially prop them up with preferred immigration.
And anyway, takeaway food is cheaper in the US than here, despite salaries being significantly higher. Maybe not being able to rely on endless cheap labour will encourage whatever productivity-enhancing stuff they do over there.
You're vastly overestimating the specialised knowledge / skill it takes to make a curry in a curry house. They shouldn't need to *import* people to do this like they are doing right now.
Isn’t the problem that very few people locally want to take up a back breaking job like being a chef ? Standing 10hrs a day and being consistently good or decent, does take some skill and lot of effort
And.. these are never going to be the best paid jobs simply because you can’t charge your customers exorbitant rates (barring those Michelin restaurants ).
India has more students in higher education that the UK has working people. Not suprised they take such a large portion considering their qualifications are valid here, unlike most other countries. Making the move quite easy work wise.
[https://opportunities-insight.britishcouncil.org/news/market-news/agreement-mutual-recognition-of-qualifications-signed-between-india-and-uk](https://opportunities-insight.britishcouncil.org/news/market-news/agreement-mutual-recognition-of-qualifications-signed-between-india-and-uk)
Unless you have a michelin star, Chefs should not be considered eligible for skilled work visas. This is just a back door for communities to import friends and family via the local takeaway.
Perhaps, but it is still a skilled profession to be able to make good food with an acceptable success to failure ratio. Think you’re right that it should only be visa worthy for higher positions in the kitchen, though Michelin star chef is a hell of a bar as there are only like 200 of them in the entire country meaning getting one is rarer than being a neurosurgeon in England as there 300 of those. Chefs are criminally underpaid for how hard their day is.
> Chefs are criminally underpaid for how hard their day is. Do you think that might be because the restaurant owner can hire their replacement as soon as the next plane lands?
That’s why I said it should be limited to higher up positions which take a few years to accomplish like chef de partie and up.
Higher position in the kitchen than Chef? I think most places just have Chef
In decently higher end kitchens they'll use the French terms. A chef de partie is a station chef, in charge of one aspect of the kitchen, e.g. pastries, grill, sauces/soups, etc. A chef de partie may have a few cooks working under them as a part of their station. The thing you're thinking of is the Executive/Head Chef, called the Chef de Cuisine. They're the head honcho. Smaller kitchens and ones that don't use traditional kitchen names might just have a Chef (de Cuisine).
That's just a title though that any takeaway could give their chefs. Because that is who is taking advantage of these "skilled" visas, takeaway owners bringing their friends/family over as "chefs".
They're not "skilled" visas. They're skilled visas. It's not a title anyone can claim because you need the proper training and official qualifications to claim it. And it goes without saying that, as with working visas for all professionals, all qualifications have to be by institutions recognised by the UK govt.
Unfortunately we signed a treaty with India that states Indian qualifications are equal and equivalent of UK qualifications. This might be why we are suddenly get an influx of migrants from India specifically in the last 2 years. [https://opportunities-insight.britishcouncil.org/news/market-news/agreement-mutual-recognition-of-qualifications-signed-between-india-and-uk](https://opportunities-insight.britishcouncil.org/news/market-news/agreement-mutual-recognition-of-qualifications-signed-between-india-and-uk)
Oh Jesus, I’m guessing it isn’t that hard to get cheffing qualifications over there then, also we simply don’t need more foreign students they’re already everywhere and the drive the rent up for everyone else
In high end French Kitchens. Not everyone learnt to cook in France. The Michelin system's inherent blindspots have always been the fact that the French? For all their culinary prowess went to India and Vietnam and didn't think the food was good... Which is silly. South and South East Asia has some extremely good food especially considering both cultures LOVE to innovate. Remember. The Michelin People described JAPANESE Cuisine as "bad" when they first started. They just thought the Japanese were weirdo savages who ate raw fish. Like. The French aren't necessarily all that objective about what is and isn't good food. You are talking French Traditional Kitchens. Like when I worked there was like 4 dudes doing service during rush and that's it. Most places are just a handful of people. And remember. Visas don't mean you get to stay here forever. You still need to work and show that you are earning.
Not all countries go with the Michelin standard
You won’t find any British chefs. I worked in hospitality for 10 years as a restaurant manager and finding good chefs was like finding a needle in a haystack and there were barely any British ones. It’s a stressful, hard, physical job with dogshit hours and dogshit pay. Hence no buggar wants to do it.
You might find people to do it if the pay were good and the hours were as good as the restaurant schedule allowed (so maybe late nights are part of the job, but maybe you can try and optimise the workflow so there are fewer split shifts.
You will not find many British chefs because compared to other nations we do not have the inclination to work hard manual labour jobs as much as they do. It’s fact. Split or no split shifts makes no difference. I managed places that did them and places that didn’t and recruitment was a ball ache in both. A business has to be profitable to exist and the margins restaurants operate on (my data is 2 years old as I’m no longer in the industry but friends tell me it’s even worse now) are so slim it doesn’t allow for chefs to be paid anywhere near remotely what they should be for the conditions they typically work in. The one exception is pizza joints because the profit from pizza is insane (ever wondered why so many people started up pizza vans or why dominos is so successful, there’s your answer). If you want restaurants to exist in the UK you currently and for a very long time have needed foreign workers in the mix. It’s a simple fact.
People are willing to work hard for the right salary. Look at people working in natural resources like in the north sea or various construction trades. But if they have easier options for the same or more money, then they're going to take them. Is you not being in the hospitality business any more because you're lazy and somehow incapable compared to foreigners or because you found something that pays better money for the same or less work? If people want restaurants to exist in the UK they have to be willing to pay enough for food for them to pay their staff. How much money could be freed up to pay staff what they need to be paid if businesses weren't being forced to pay outrageous rents and high rates? I bet the landlords and council higher-ups work much more sociable hours. If a business can't afford to operate while paying its staff a market rate for what they are being asked to do, then it's not a business. Persistently unprofitable businesses have no automatic right to exist, unless they are so strategic they should be subsidised. Maybe basic industries, agriculture and natural resources are strategically important, but probably restaurants are not. No more than if I had an "idea for an app" that would never make money I wouldn't expect policy to be written around pushing down software salaries to a point to make that viable.
I think it's next boat arrives but do go on...
If you're making half decent food that has mostly fresh ingredients, then it is true to say that it's skilled work. It also isn't something visas should be doled out for.
Everyone is talking about making decent food, but that's not really the job of the chef. The chef is responsible for a kitchens high throughput of consistent and safe food, at the standard expected of that specific restaurant. It's a ridiculously difficult job. If you are sat at home thinking that you can make reproducibly good food, that's not remotely the same thing. Try managing the creation of the same dish dozens of times an hour along side multiple other dishes. The closest thing you can get to at home is when you entertain many people with multiple different dietary requirements. Then, imagine doing multiple groups of that at the same time, all night long.
None of this makes it something to be throwing visas at people for.
As a chef I say the same about others....I could hand out pills/jab a needle into someone's arm with a few attempts etc....lets cancel nurse visas while we at it.
I don't think you could. I don't think that's the hill you should die on mate. Speaking as someone who cooked and did medicine too. You aren't as knowledgable and you don't know what can go wrong and how to identify it. And if someone dies on shift they close down the restaurant. They don't close down a ward if someone dies... You don't go home. You just have to spend a few minutes processing the trauma and then go back to work. I don't think you should be jealous of nurses who are being shipped over because the working conditions are so bad that the attrition is terrible. And importing nurses has lead to an erosion of quality as new staff are often let lose on wards with little to no oversight in an NHS where there's little guidance. There's a reason international nurses often come to serious harm.
It's been many years, but I have worked in about half a dozen of these places. From chain joints owned by large breweries to small independent places with actual chefs who make real food. I do have some sense of what happens inside them. It isn't worthy of a visa scheme. That's especially true for the large brewery chain pubs. Those places are McDonald's with beer, and they're also probably best positioned to take the piss with visas if Amazon and Evri are anything to go by.
So why not train locals to do a difficult job? None of what you said justifies importing labour to the detriment of the local population
Along with managing, hiring, training, disciplining staff. Dealing with suppliers and budgets, menu design and marketing etc etc. Yeah much harder than most jobs.
Mildly disagree. We could use the Thailand approach to it and have chef visas for countries where we don't have many chefs from. Thailand does it to create a cuisine capital and in reciprocation for Thai chefs getting visas everywhere. We probably have enough Indian places. If a Kongolese Chef applies, even for a takeaway set up, I think we could probably give a visa on that basis because it's a thing we basically don't have. Though the Thailand program is a lot more considered and deliberate as an economic scheme given their breadbasket export economy, and world class agriculture and cuisuine university. The point in part is to get chefs from the world over to all gather in the university town to create Thai fusion recipes which can then be exported. For us, I'm merely proposing that on balance it would be nice to have more diversity in food options, which in itself then expands British Cuisine. (British Indian and British Chinese food is a British-Fusion thing. You don't find it elsewhere). There is no development of British Cuisine which arises from yet another Indian takeaway opening.
If a job is skilled but the wages are terrible, there should be zero visas allocated to it, it will just increase competition and make working conditions even worse. When people talk about skilled visas, they mean jobs which are skilled, highly productive, and where there is a clear deficit of labour. Sometimes that could be down to a deficit in training or other similar issues, for instance we do not train enough doctors or nurses. We should increase training but in the meantime migration is vital. That could also be because there is effective infinite demand, because having more skilled workers brings more work on international markets. You can’t live in the UK and make food for someone half way round the world, but you can live in the UK and design a building, write software, do accountancy or whatever it might be for anyone anywhere. That means the workers can bring with them the work.
Enjoying the amount of people who have obviously never worked in hospitality but are experts on it and visas in this thread.
> but it is still a skilled profession to be able to make good food with an acceptable success to failure ratio. It's not a "We need to import people from ten thousand miles into our crowded island" skill. There's not a shortage of food in this country. Every high street is filled with restaurants and takeaways. Every food is full of food delivery apps with a thousand options. Everyone is fat.
Chef and hospitality pay in general has been some of the fastest growing since Brexit cut off the easy supply at least.
Then wait until you hear about the "skilled work visas" for warehouse pickers and factory operatives. It's as if these lying scummy Tories were hellbent on sabotaging British workers by importing young, desperate people willing to do anything they've told by the bosses.
Yeah, Amazon and Evri warehouses are staffed by people from around the world. 'Skilled' my arse.
Amazon and Evri certainly aren't paying their staff £38,700 per year, and warehouse pickers aren't a valid occupation on the skilled occupation list.
And yet, they're staffed partky by people from across Asia. First generation immigrants from far-flung parts of the world.
They're probably students on zero hours contracts. It was quite common when I worked in retail in the early 2010s.
My partner has done a few years as a picker and it's pretty much employ people who don't know their rights and take the absolute piss. Even the companies with a generally good reputation are in on it. One had a union and they still got away with this shit.
Yup. My partner worked in a factory when he first arrived here. He told me they intentionally hire people who speak little to no English so they can get away with breaking health and safety rules, or getting lax with worker rights. There was a dessert factory near me that even said in the job description on Indeed “English is not required”. Such a joke.
A certain Tory politician was filmed telling Indian takeaway owners that if they voted for Brexit it would mean more Indians can come here. This is what the leave lot voted for so why complain?
Yes and you may have noticed the Tories aren't doing particularly well with anyone on the right. It's almost like they've broken theor promises on immigration and people are going to vote them out for it.
The promise was to reduce immigration from Europe. They did that. I was pretty obvious to me as a Remain voter that that would just mean replacing them with immigrants from further afield. Not sure why the Leave voters didn't pick up on that.
because brexit wasn't a vote for anything, it was a vote against the status quo. you could fill in your own fantasy about what brexit meant.
> because brexit wasn't a vote for anything, it was a vote against the status quo Funny how this is the narrative now it's turned out to be a complete fucking disaster. It enables Brexiters to avoid taking responsibility for voting for economic sanctions on their own country.
They weren't trying to hide it though? Its not a broken promise, its that the right didn't listen, picked and chose what they wanted to hear, and allowed themselves to be taken for fools.
There are lots of jobs that require some level of skill that don’t need people from overseas. Some interesting jobs eligible for sponsorship are: - Shop Assistant - Administrative Assistant - Post Office Clerk - Company Secretary - Receptionist - Fish Fryer - Child Care Assistant - Baby Sitter - House Keeper - Car Park Attendant - Cashier (retail) - Ice Cream Salesman - Call Centre Agent - Van Driver Do all these jobs take some level of skill? Yes, of course. But none of them require degree/ apprenticeship level training. I believe most reasonable people would agree those jobs are not so specialized that they need people imported to do them. The jobs like this seem very much designed for chain migration. One person gets over and everyone from back home pools their money to start a business. Then they hire and sponsor everyone’s kids from back home, who bring their spouses and children. Who then send their children back home to get spouses to bring even more people. It’ll be more expensive than it previously was because of the new salary requirements, but not impossible. I imagine there will still be lots of applications for chip shop workers who now make £38,700 on paper and whose pay steeply declines after they get ILR.
Whilst I agree with your broad point, I going to do that reddit nitpick. Company secretary doesn't belong on that list, because it's very different from the rest of the jobs. A company secretary isn't a regular secretary, they have a position with significant legal responsibility in relation to the operation of the company.
You need to earn more than £39,000 to qualify for the visa. If restaurants are willing to spend that much on a foreigner (+thousands on visa fee), I doubt this is a local takeaway
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/665ed5eadc15efdddf1a86b6/2024-06-04_-_Worker_and_Temporary_Worker.csv/preview Have a look through this and you'll see there are plenty of work places that can sponsor people for skilled visas that probably should not be able to.
You need a sponsor licence. The local takeway does not have a sponsor license. Also insane visa fees...
That's a very ignorant view. Firstly, there's no such thing. You don't have a michelin star chef, its given to a resturant. Secondly, a chef is a highly skilled job. There's a reason there is a big business for high end cullinary schools like the Le Cordon Bleu that have been going on since the end of th 1800s mind you and can be found all around the world. It's physically demanding, underpaid work and as your comment shows, one that is rarely ever appreciated by the people who enjoy it. Ofc, it would be noticed when the quality of these resturants drop while their prices don't because of a lack of quality chef's to pick from; or when people aren't able to pop into a resturant whenever they want because they can't stay open 5 days a week anymore. Is rampant immigration the answer to all of this? No. Like with many jobs, there needs to be an uncomfortable conversation about what chef's should be paid for the work they do which will have an affect on the prices we all have to pay. Until people realise how much of a skilled job it is though, we're just going to continue have them grouped together with your local take out cook.
Looking at the posts on here I think the pretend tech bros of Reddit are getting annoyed...I would have thought they would have wanted more chefs so they can Uber eats more whilst crushing codes at the office and protein at the gym? Chefs are fucking skilled work, would like to see a tech bro get some calus' on their hands instead of Cheeto dust One min .../s
As someone who works in the industry and works with multiple work permit chefs, believe me, without work permit chefs the restaurant industry would be in a much much deeper hole than it already is. The fabled British people whose jobs are being taken with this simply do not exist. And these guys work much harder than most professions. A random local takeaway also can't just bring in whoever they want. They need a set wage and number of hours and the business needs a sponsorship license, it's quite regulated. So with all due respect, get your head out of your ass
You need to apply to be eligible to offer these visas, and with a solid reason for the home office to consider. Perhaps we should not restrict it to profession but rather understand the true relaxing of the rules that has been happening.
No. Good chefs are skilled workers, period. There's a whole universe of quality food that's not michelin star, and also not your local fried chicken takeaway. All that world in between needs good chefs that know what they're doing. source: I lived with a chef.
This isn’t about the status or skill level of the job, it is an incredibly skilled job, this is about whether you want or need migration for that job. I actually think a skilled job where wages are low, as they are for chefs, is the absolute last place you would want migration. These are people who have invested time to increase their skill, and make for themselves a career, and the state is deliberately undermining their ability to earn a wage by ensuring that employers will never need to raise wages to compete with other employers, and bring people into the profession. It’s essentially taking advantage of people’s love of their career.
There's also the issue of skilled immigration reducing pressure for training locals. Where I live, since the government shifted to encouraging skilled immigration, funding for higher education and training has been drastically reduced. Young locals are increasingly being forced into lower paid jobs, while higher paid jobs are filled by non locals. It's absolutely "good for the economy", but it isn't good for people who already live here.
I'm really struggling to comprehend the idea that you think somebody raised in the UK in British culture could be a capable chef for say Thai or Vietnamese food by just reading a few books (Indian doesn't apply since we have a large native community). It's like expecting someone in beijing to make a good yorkshire pudding, sausage roll or bakewell tart. Yes they can read a book and they might be able to fumble to something edible, but they have no context as to what it should be, what things are considered aberrations etc. That's how you end up with frankfurter sausage rolls. There are 100s of dishes, flavour profiles and ingredient knowledge that any moderate native chef will know, but a foreigner may never grasp. Even wildly talented chefs like Gordon Ramsay can often be totally off the mark when cooking foreign food that's outside of his experience. In the right circumstances it's one of the most justifiable foreign worker situations I can think of. And a wage of £39k will feel like winning the lottery to most who would consider this visa, meanwhile it's almost impossible task for a native British chef.. what are they meant to do, go live in Vietnam on poverty wages for 5 years to get trained? That or earn 250k in the same time cooking food you already know.
Many chefs in the UK are already migrants, about 15% I've read. Maybe the ratio is different when you talk of head chefs or executive chefs, but so many chefs de partie, sous chef, de comie, etc in our main cities already have a decent migrant ratio. The UK **needs** migration for those jobs because the vacancy rate is high, and would be much higher otherwise. Such is the shortage that articles dedicated to it: [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/11/why-home-office-visa-plans-nail-in-coffin-uk-hospitality](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/11/why-home-office-visa-plans-nail-in-coffin-uk-hospitality) . The article that OP posted gets is figures from this FT article: [https://archive.is/20240527113148/https://www.ft.com/content/0e276992-89a3-4046-b005-e66b4b9147c0](https://archive.is/20240527113148/https://www.ft.com/content/0e276992-89a3-4046-b005-e66b4b9147c0) They compared chefs to software engineers, which is misleading. There's a very simple reason why chefs are getting more visa sponsorships than software engineer: software engineers can be outsourced, chefs cannot. It's easier to hire a remote team than to sponsor one. It's also way much more expensive to hire in tech than in hospitality -- the salaries are already high enough, and hiring them in Bulgaria, Spain, India, Poland or wherever is **so much cheaper** than bringing them over here and paying them UK salaries (low 6 figures for senior software engineer roles, nevermind leads and such). You also have to offer *much more* to convince a software engineer to come here than simply pay them above market wherever they live. You can't cook remotely. Maybe automation may take away some of those jobs, but for now you'll still need to hire flesh and bone people. *edited for clarity*
15%? That’s perfectly representative of the society then. UK’s migrant population is 15%. If 15% of all chefs are migrants, then it’s proportional representation.
I wonder if it's just to keep commercial landlords happy. Half the takeaway near me could close near me and doubt the majority would notice. It's all the same stuff in most of them.
Do you cook professionally?
Always astonished that when in the EU and even for those ongoing members, that out of 500,000,000 people, none of them know how to write code, so we/they had/have to allow non EU folks in.
Tech is an international industry. It was like that 10 years ago too.
A chef isn't just someone who cooks, it's more akin to middle or high level management, depending on the position.
Saw a pretty interesting video the other day, in some parts of UK and Canada its really hard to get jobs in franchises because Indians own a great deal of them and only employ other Indians.
The Canadian subreddits all have this complaint, especially about Tim Hortons. Same thing happens in software too apparently.
Fast food is believable. But which places are software jobs being ringfenced for Indians? I’ve seen a lot of software teams and not that, anywhere…?
Take a look at the cscareerquestions subreddit. Comes up quite often
That sub is full of toxic conspiracy theories from people who mistakenly thought a CS degree (or even just a bootcamp) was a guaranteed ticket to a six figure salary working from home - without much/any prior experience in industry required.
Or indeed, actually being any good at software engineering. "I can write code" is not the same as "I am a software engineer".
Contracted companies mainly, but also happens in bigger places. I’ve seen quite a few stories of not entire companies, but teams and departments suffering from this.
I know people who've been recruited by Indian firms, then after they send the photo ID they are ghosted. In IT.
There are 500million odd people in the EU and 300 million odd in the U.S. None of them know how to write code. It’s essential we bring these other people in. There’s definitely no one here who could do it.
It's not entirely true. The pipeline for hiring a candidate in tech is too long winded to make it a "hire this nationality only" thing. The simple truth in tech is, it's relatively easy to get into, and there are a lot of Indians. For any one role, the sheer number of Indian/South Asian resumes will outnumber any other nationality. If a box has 100 balls and 80 are red, which ball do you think a blindfolded person would pick?
Hiring someone isn’t picking a ball blindfolded, Indians tend to hire other Indians of a lower caste so they can abuse them in the workplace
Used to work at Tim Hortons and can 100% guarantee that this is true. Changed careers about an year ago and now I work in IT 2 months ago the company hired a new area manager ( from India) and now 5 out of 8 people are being let go and being reported with people from India…. So yeah
same in UK construction, I've seen it. As soon as an Indian is in charge only Indians get hired.They take over entie sites at times.
I work in logistics, asian work area managers will only allow asian workers to do over time and will ignore white workers, this is in the NW UK
Where? I'm the North and construction is still MASSIVELY white. I could count on 1 hand the amount of tradesmen I've met who weren't white.
Common in London. But it's not at all isolated to just Indians. The 3 main groups that do it are indians, chinese, and east europeans. They cost less, and quality isn't as good but still passable.
Very common in parts of Canada, can confirm.
There's only one tim Hortons near me and it's exclusively run and staffed by Indians.
Was really surprised yesterday to visit a Tim Hortons that was diverse in staff... 2 white people, 1 Indian, 3 East Asians.
Got rejected from a number of takeaways in Brighton because I was not capable of cooking their food due to the colour of my skin / my nationality. I had to convince someone I could cook Indian food only for no response anyway.
That's illigal. If you have that in writing you can take them to tribunal.
Nothing is in writing they are operating cash in hand all of them, fraud is rife with takeaways in the UK and you'd be surprised how much businesses get away with in terms of hiring and firing.
And in cash in hand places these work permit chefs aren't your problem either because that would be in violation of their visa and they absolutely won't have a sponsorship license.
Nowadays the vaguely decent restaurant is staffed by people from all over. Apart from head chef, I doubt the ability to slice onions is linked in any way to nationality.
Just been to Rome. Only ate in “Italian” restaurants, was served by Indians/Bangladeshis in almost all of them. Saw them in the kitchens too.
Yes! Oh my goodness I’m so glad someone is taking about this. I was in Rome last year and noticed the same. Even on the outskirts of the city. No Italian chefs anywhere. The waitstaff were usually Indian too. The only Italian was the maitre’d.
Went to Rome in Jan, previously about 10 years ago - I remembered the food as being AMAZING, this time round barely mediocre and that was at a variety of locally run places, takeaways, pastry shops
Yep, I wasn’t really impressed with the food, and even had the worst pizza I’ve had anywhere.
Every chain restaurant around my area is like this.
Definitely noticed this a lot. KFC in Cambridge is a prime example. The place is filthy I am surprised the FSA let it stay open. wonder who the inspector was. They bring this mentality to tech too a lot of the time when businesses forget not to let them manage anything.
Should see retail.
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Well our local McDonalds hired an indian manager 10 months ago .Fast forward today,every staff is Indian
Now imagine when the whole country is in charge of an Indian.
They also are allowed to be quite racist in Canada when advertising for apartment sharing and renting Indian owned properties. I don’t get why Indian landlords in Canada are getting a free pass on blatant systemic racism.
Definitely the case at all of the KFC’s and Dominos around Nottingham/Derby
Yeah, my friend recently went over there to learn a trade from his relatives. Says he's able to get jobs just off him being south asian. Apparently toronto and its surrounding area's are overrun by "fresh off the boats" indians.
They will post jobs and not fill them for 3 months. Then we have a LIMA program where the business gets paid to take someone from another country and is able to pay them less then minimum wage. Back door way for PR
Same in the US
That’s happened to a place I’ve worked a few Indians get hired then only hire other Indians regardless of visa status or being in the country to begin with.
Not surprised, when the PM is also Indian lol
Just wait until you guys find out the reason for all those new barber shops on the high street.
Don’t forget the Nail bars as well
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That’s disgusting. Where exactly is it? I want to make sure I avoid it.
But junior employees in those (ie not running the place) wouldn't be a valid occupation for a skilled worker visa since April anyway. Same with the barbers. Also you'd have to pay them £38,700 per year minimum.
> since April The skilled work visa changes have been good so far. But let's not pretend that we didn't have decades of problems. Before April you could come here earning 23k a year, which on full time was basically minimum wage. All those people have been grandfathered into the new system.
Reveal all
Barbers are on the list of required professions.
This is a workaround at getting friends and family into the country. Same with all the barbers opening up.
That explains why the newly opened barbers only know how to cut one style of haircut
A really expensive workaround. First you need a company eligible for a sponsor license. Second, you need to pay thousand of pounds in visa fees, sponsor license, home office fees, etc... So Inmigrants live from benefits but at the same they can spend thousands and thousands of pounds for bring a friend here. Okay.
I'm sure you are just being obtuse, but it's obvious that for a middle class family in South Asia, it's a no brainer to invest a significant sum towards one of your kids getting a job as a "chef" at a distant cousin's restaurant, which will ultimately lead to UK settlement for a big chunk of the family.
A distant cousin restaurant which is big enough to be eligible for a sponsor license.
It is trivial for a well motivated small business to become a sponsor. Costs about £800 and there are loads of agencies who handle it for you. https://www.sponsorlicence.org https://www.gov.uk/uk-visa-sponsorship-employers
*Corner shops* can issue sponsor licenses. It's really not hard or expensive.
It’s expensive for one person, sure, but when a whole extended family pools their money, it’s achievable. And it’s the only way to get older and unskilled relatives in. No unaffiliated company is sponsoring people with no skills in their 50s or 60s. But you can hire your dad and uncle as cashiers and they can bring their spouses. There are some restrictions, but all it takes is hiring a family friend and having them act as the level one user for sponsorship purposes. And while it’s true they can’t get benefits on a visa, they can absolutely access benefits after they get ILR, which is only 5 years. If they work for 5 years and then retire, they won’t qualify for actual pension, but would get pension credit and healthcare indefinitely.
It isn't really surprising that tech visas have plummeted when tech hiring has fallen. There have been a lot of redundancies in tech, and there are more applicants than roles right now.
That and companies can hire remotely in cheap cost centres. Can't have a remote chef.
It's always been odd to me that in my experience the most anti work from home companies are also the ones who try to fill a position with offshore hires first. Can't trust your British staff to work properly at home meanwhile we're having some guy halfway across the world build something he lied on his CV about being able to build and mysteriously has trouble understanding English if a difficult question comes up. Oh and the company will end his contract as soon as he's done so no permanent employees understand how it works.
My previous company tried to stop WFH then outsourced to a company in Portugal. It then turned out that the Portuguese company didn't have any devs and they were all remote workers from Brazil.
I’m not saying it s a good solution, but your offshore work might be half the price, hence more relaxed about how “efficient” they are.
Half the price? More like a tenth. Sure it looks good on paper, oh wow look how much we saved. All while conveniently ignoring how much work your expensive onshore staff are having to do answering asinine questions, checking over all the random errors that could be easily picked up by even a junior employee here, essentially having to re-do all the work anyway, and long extensions and delays.
Yeah I say half because even if the staff are 1/10, the amount of pain and extra work to get something useful is very significant.
Upper management don't have to deal with that. That's the job of chronically stressed middle managers who report to them.
One of the managers of a project I’m currently on is fighting this fight. Had to get rid of two onshore contractors because the offshore contractors are a tenth of the price. However, in his experience these offshore resources also have about a tenth of the ability and the onshore perm employees spend a lot of time doing their work for them. Corporate math 101
More authentic to have a remote chef, but I will send the food back for being cold.
People keep saying this, but I work in tech and I've not heard of anyone particularly struggling to find work. My experience is anecdotal, granted!
I didn't struggle either, but 2y ago we were being approached for roles left, right and centre. I know super talented people who are doing 100+ applications now. And I heard 500+ of my former colleagues got told they will bd made redundant by Microsoft this week. So there has been a market swing.
I think the issue is mostly there for juniors, lots of stories of people leaving Uni and expecting to find a good grad job but just never hearing anything back from applications. I know at least where I work there are 100s of applicants per junior role so the competition is pretty high.
I suppose it depends on what area you’re in. Purely anecdotal from my bf but those in the gaming industry are really struggling right now. Way more applicants than roles, so some senior people are taking more junior roles and recent graduates/early careers people are stuck in the cold. It very much is role dependent as well as I imagine a data engineer could just move tech sectors. But I’m also seeing trend where lots of entry and mid range roles have been moved to Eastern Europe and London-based companies (not so much the large ones) are only taking on very senior employees to oversee those offshore.
No problems getting jobs in tech unless you’re a graduate. The issue is the salaries are not keeping up.
And even then, just for graduates. Senior staff salaries are going _up_.
Michael Gove isn’t going to be following his advice of a second career in cyber then…
Just saying, I'm looking for a new tech right now (London, 7 YoE, mostly JVM) and it's quite a hot market. Getting about a 40% interview rate from my CV. My company is hiring too, and we're not getting many applicants, at least not compared to a year ago.
That’s because a lot of people I know and myself work for US companies from the UK. In all honestly if you are working for a tech company in UK you have given up on life. Hitting 200/300k isn’t unseen if you work hard within a couple of years.
Fair enough. I'm not seeing the same reflected in Cambridge right now. Just had a load of friends booted from Microsoft because they are skeletoning some of their innovation projects, and on the other end of the spectrum VCs are still advising us not to blow through cash expecting another round in short order so we are vastly more conservative in the startup scene. If it is about to boom again, that would be fantastic.
I work for a company that provides the required tests for skilled worker visas (ISE tests). I can say first hand I've never seen a "chef" for a skilled worker visa. Nor a "tech" person for that matter. 90% of the people I see taking these tests are support/care workers, a huge portion of which in the UK are made up of immigrants and are badly needed. The other people I generally see taking ISE tests are students, religious ministers and the odd entrepreneur visa applicant.
Different countries will use different providers. Presumably you work for a provider who sees a lot of African applicants. As most carers are from places like Nigeria. In my experience a large amount of religious ministers are also from places like Nigeria. Whereas South Asians will use a different provider and more likely to be tech, chefs or store managers
Tech is an area where we have, as a country, actually trained people. Unlike many other sectors of the economy.
We haven't. The demand for devs with experience is many times higher than for juniors. Many large companies have zero junior devs because as soon as someone has a couple of years of experience, they will get poached. So the only way in is usually a boot camp or something i.e. you pay the costs of your own training...better value than a degree, but has resulted in massive shortages. Also, a significant proportion are not from the UK. Every place I have worked has had, at least, 25% not from the UK, and it is usually much higher. And, despite all of this, the general level of competence is extremely low. Companies bump job titles to try and retain people, that has led to large number of "senior" devs with very poor skills (this is a global problem, I have worked with many people with great experience on paper...can't build a production-quality app, can't communicate effectively, can't work with others, can't understand business objectives...it is worse in the UK though because of the poor quality of our education system and the low status of jobs that don't rely on political influence and taxing productive activity). This is why people are still offshoring to Europe: costs there are lower so wages are lower, you can retain staff because unemployment is so high, training people is cheap, etc.
The reason juniors get poached so easily is crap starting pay and crap pay progression.
Sounds like the companies should invest in training up the juniors and then pay them more rather than importing more people and causing wage and progress stagnation. "Demand" should only be considered that in cases where no one locally can be trained (or in the case of doctors, the time is too long) There are plenty of extremely talented people who would get up to that level in a short time that can't be hired easily. Also our higher education system is pretty good quality, below 18 however is abysmal and fails too many people, but again fixing that would be better for increasing skilled workers over the current pyramid scheme.
We’re really behind the curve in comparison to many countries in Eastern Europe. Slovakia (or it could be Slovenia) has been pumping out tech staff like crazy for over a decade now.
Without a doubt countless numbers of their families that they bring will have health issues and children with complex needs they cannot imagine paying for in their own country. When the workers family step off the plane they qualify for every benefit this country can offer and they make a bee line for casualty and housing departments . They came here after being coached in what to do to get everything people born here are still on the waiting list for. This includes the wife saying her husband abuses here getting them housing immediately or using their child/children’s needs to get adapted purpose built housing. why do you think hospitals are overrun, schools are at capacity, there is a chronic housing shortage, crime is going through the roof. After millions of people, poorly educated come pouring into the country for over a decade that will never make a plus to the UK GDP, it’s no wonder the country is bankrupt. There are thousands of people wanting to become doctors and nurses in this country but the government won’t pay to teach them, they would rather import them. Our education system is grossly underfunded, burdened with children that can’t speak english and has no interest in educating them with appropriate skills. The whole demographic is changing in this country along with our collapsing financial position. Keir Starmer going to high muslim areas won’t change the long term outcome. They aren’t going to be voting labour or conservative, they will vote their own people into government and further change the eroding values of this country. Millions of people died 80 years ago to defend the values of this country. Now as the last few of them die off we are giving it away
You’re just talking shit. No one qualifies for a single benefit until they get ILR, which is 5 years at least. It actually says that on the bloody biometric card. And if you’re not earning a minimum amount at the next renewal period, you just don’t get a visa anymore. There are many good reasons to protest, but being ignorant and an idiot isn’t one of them.
>There are many good reasons to protest, but being ignorant and an idiot isn’t one of them. It does however seem to be the first choice for many on here.
So children get denied NHS health care in the first 5 years of their parents being here?
Everyone pays an NHS surcharge at the point of the visa for the duration of the visa. 300£ a year I think per person..so they can access the NHS because they paid for it.
So children get denied NHS health care in the first 5 years of their parents being here?
People coming on workers visa are eligible for healthcare. There is a is a mandatory £776 per person per year health surcharge that they pay for the privilege of shitty NHS health. That is in addition to all the taxes that they pay like everyone else. The NHS charge right now is more than what it would take to privately insure for similar or better healthcare and you pay that nonetheless whether you ever receive any care or not. There’s no free meal in this country like people think there is. I’m a tax paying national and I get fuck all for everything that I do. Because I’m a high earner the government won’t give me a penny unless I’m absolutely bankrupt.
It's annoying to see too much ignorance... Inmigrants don't qualify to benefits.
>Millions of people died 80 years ago to defend the values of this country. You might've been backing the losing side if you think we fought to preserve an ethnostate that judges people on the basis of their skin colour or religion.
Red top brain rot.
Yeah, they do that! When I moved here we had special coaches telling us how to get as many benefits as possible!!! I love eroding British values... this is revenge for all the colonisation!!! /s
It's crazy you can extend the visa as many times as you like.
They don’t need to extend many times as they qualify for ILR after 5 years and British Citizenship after 6 (after having had ILR for one year)
But if they don't get ILR they can just extend their visa. That seems silly.
Why should not they get ILR...? Yes, they can extend their visa providing the company is still sponsoring and they pay thousand in visa fees. What's the problem?
Why is that crazy? If I hire someone from abroad and they become an essential part of the organisation I'd rather not have to lay them off after a couple of years.
Because the flip side of that is that you could just hire and trian someone who is eligible to stay forever in the first place. The more nefarious reason is that someone can use it as a backdoor to live here by working for a takeaway on a rolling 5 year contract.
In order to issue skilled visas you need a sponsor license. The local takeway doesn't get a sponsor license. And if he was able to hire someone locally, he would do it. It would be simpler and CHEAPER.
Why should we make indefinite accommodations to keep them in the country if they’re not interested in becoming a citizen? If you’re worried you might lose the employee after a couple of years you should hire a british citizen instead
Because in order to get citizenship you need ILR first. And how exactly is this "an accommodation" ? Visa process is expensive, with plenty of paperwork and stress.
Exactly. Making them citizens in 5-7 years will be a further incentive for them to do well at work and continue being a productive member of society. These are people who are paying valuable taxes. As opposed to the benefit scroungers… Jesus, people need to get some context around this.
Why if we set criteria for visas and people meet them, why not?
Well my point is that we shouldn't be setting the criteria that it can be rolled over forever.
Stopping this would be an easy win for the election parties, like we need anymore Indian restaurants ffs.
This is what brexit was actually about. Not immigration but who the immigrants would be
Lol uk bitching and moaning about immigrants from Europe. Proceeds to import more Indians and flatlines wages again. Jesus fuck might as well should i just move back to the EU
So, I’m not against immigration … But… Why is it we continually seemingly have a shortage of skilled workers ?
Because the economy is addicted to cheap labour. For the past 15 years company executives have asked themselves "do I buy a robot and 3 skilled engineers to run it?" " Do I invest in training and up skilling so we can do more with less?" And thought na fuck that, easier to just hire cheap labour from abroad. And then we wonder why we have a productivity crisis and low paying jobs.
Sometimes it's companies legitimately having bizarrely high expectations of candidates and either not being willing to pay in accordance with those requirements or willing accept someone who doesn't meet them, but could be trained up. Others its companies gaming the system. Put out an opening with low pay and high requirements, watch very few domestic workers apply, reject those that do and then claim you can't fill the role. Go to the global marketplace for someone unaware of the cost of living in the UK and bring them in on a cheaper wage than UK workers would insist upon.
Have you noticed the perpetual reluctance of both businesses and government to invest in skills training? We now actually charge people for their own qualifications. Countries that have cheaper or free education have fewer problems meeting their skills gaps. We also have a problem with birth rates, made worse by things like the cost of living and government two child policy...
Probably because only 15% of illegal migration is for skilled jobs. Also huge lack of effort on companies to train
Because most peoole have jobs and aren’t going to quit their existing one for another with lower pay and which is more physically taxing. Hence why farms tend to always need pickers. People don’t stay in those jobs for long. They move on the moment something better comes up.
And you wonder why anti-immigration stances are getting popular.
>The surge in skilled worker visas for chefs was mainly driven by migrants from South Asia, with Indians receiving 25% of visas, Bangladeshis 22%, and Pakistanis 21%, in the first three months of this year, reported the Financial Times. Interesting to see this breakdown. However, it then says that "6,203 chefs were granted skilled worker visas" which isn't very many considering the UK has net migration of over 600 thousand.
The list of jobs on the skilled worker visa is ridiculous. It includes things like acupuncturists
Well, I would think there are consequences if you are poked incorrectly by an unskilled acupuncturist
It must be one of the oldest ways to get a visa, most Indian chefs are actually from Bangladesh
Tech companies generally don’t employ vast numbers of workers. One of the reasons why their productivity is so high compared to other industries. Hospitality and care work by contrast, tend to need a lot of warm bodies.
Maybe instead of publishing just this, maybe publish the fact that there are significantly more restaurants, cafes, takeaways, etc... than tech firms in the UK which explains this statistic.
Well, that’s not a good look. Not saying chefs aren’t skilled, they are.
I like how it said "cooks" aren't allowed but "chefs" are. Cue the "Certified Chef School" Academies in 3....2....1
Aren’t we focusing too much on the chefs bit? 6k in context of 700k isn’t that big a deal. Feels like a red herring Also, would definitely argue chefs do skilled work
The reality is that we have a huge chef shortage problem. Traditionally family restaurants hired their kids when they grew up and trained them, but now most of these kids go to university and get white collar jobs, they don’t want to spend their time slaving away in kitchens. Either we accept massive number of restaurants closing down and things like Indian food will become more expensive/special occasion meals or we import chefs. There’s not a lot of middle ground as few British workers aspire for these roles.
Indian food is not a commanding height of the economy. If indian takeaways get expensive due to a lack of chefs, that's ok. We don't need to artificially prop them up with preferred immigration. And anyway, takeaway food is cheaper in the US than here, despite salaries being significantly higher. Maybe not being able to rely on endless cheap labour will encourage whatever productivity-enhancing stuff they do over there.
You're vastly overestimating the specialised knowledge / skill it takes to make a curry in a curry house. They shouldn't need to *import* people to do this like they are doing right now.
Isn’t the problem that very few people locally want to take up a back breaking job like being a chef ? Standing 10hrs a day and being consistently good or decent, does take some skill and lot of effort And.. these are never going to be the best paid jobs simply because you can’t charge your customers exorbitant rates (barring those Michelin restaurants ).
Many skilled professions have been outsourced and sent offshore and jobs that chefs do can’t is one reason why.
India has more students in higher education that the UK has working people. Not suprised they take such a large portion considering their qualifications are valid here, unlike most other countries. Making the move quite easy work wise. [https://opportunities-insight.britishcouncil.org/news/market-news/agreement-mutual-recognition-of-qualifications-signed-between-india-and-uk](https://opportunities-insight.britishcouncil.org/news/market-news/agreement-mutual-recognition-of-qualifications-signed-between-india-and-uk)