I've received a comment from someone who is known to me but prefers not to be identified. The comment is this:
"For several years, work permits for 'Sports and Ents' people have been treated differently from WPs for plumbers and kitchen hands (or indeed doctors and teachers). This recognises that the majority of Sports and Ents people are visiting for a very short period of time, for a concert or match, and have no inclination to remain, undercutting wages by taking jobs as kitchen hands and plumbers.
"I think there are very good reasons for expecting visa applications to be accompanied by biometric data, but I also think that there are extremely good reasons for creating a different rule-set for Sports-and-Ents people - the precedent is already there with differential treatment iro of Work Permits.
"This is going to affect all nationals which require Visas to enter the UK. I can imagine it impinging severely on football teams that are playing British teams in European competitions, considering the number of African and South American players based in Europe, who just fly in or about three days for a match, and leave again If you, or someone, is serious about this, it might be worth seeing if musical forces can join together with the FA and bodies such as that."
Very good points from your friend. Given how much more influential sport seems to be culturally than classical music (or maybe I'm projecting the US situation on the UK - apologies if that's an error), maybe there's something to be said for both teams to get together on this.
2 comments:
I've received a comment from someone who is known to me but prefers not to be identified. The comment is this:
"For several years, work permits for 'Sports and Ents' people have been treated differently from WPs for plumbers and kitchen hands (or indeed doctors and teachers). This recognises that the majority of Sports and Ents people are visiting for a very short period of time, for a concert or match, and have no inclination to remain, undercutting wages by taking jobs as kitchen hands and plumbers.
"I think there are very good reasons for expecting visa applications to be accompanied by biometric data, but I also think that there are extremely good reasons for creating a different rule-set for Sports-and-Ents people - the precedent is already there with differential treatment iro of Work Permits.
"This is going to affect all nationals which require Visas to enter the UK. I can imagine it impinging severely on football teams that are playing British teams in European competitions, considering the number of African and South American players based in Europe, who just fly in or about three days for a match, and leave again If you, or someone, is serious about this, it might be worth seeing if musical forces can join together with the FA and bodies such as that."
Very good points from your friend. Given how much more influential sport seems to be culturally than classical music (or maybe I'm projecting the US situation on the UK - apologies if that's an error), maybe there's something to be said for both teams to get together on this.
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