Skilled migrant rules unfair to 49,000 in UK: MPs

British immigration rule changes implemented with retrospective effect last year affecting 49,000 highly-skilled migrants including those from India, with many of them even facing deportation, should be dropped immediately, a report by MPs and Peers said on Thursday.

Parliament's Joint Committee on Human Rights said the changes made last November to the Home Office's Highly Skilled Migrant Programme, which was introduced in 2002 to attract 'the brightest and the best', were applied retrospectively to people who had settled in Britain.

"The changes to the rules are so clearly incompatible with article 8 - the right to respect for home and family life - and so contrary to basic notions of fairness, that the case for Parliament immediately revisiting them is overwhelming," the report said.

The rules were tightened by Immigration Minister Liam Byrne last November amid claims that the scheme, which is designed to attract doctors, scientists and computer specialists, was being abused with some who qualified, taking low-skilled

jobs once they came to UK.

But the changes also included making it more difficult to earn the right to settle permanently in Britain for those who had already arrived.

The Lords and Commons Joint Committee on Human Rights urged the immigration minister to change the rules to ensure that they apply only to new migrants rather than the 49,000 who have already arrived under the HSMP.

The Committee said the changes breached the European Convention on Human Rights. The JCHR report comes two months after the Commission for Racial Equality criticised the Border and Immigration Agency on implementing discriminatory changes for the HSMP extension criteria and that the changes does not follow race relations law.