“The April 2026 Visa Bulletin set the EB-2 India date at July 2014, which means a 14-year wait for a green card. The UK Global Talent Visa gets you to settlement in three. The clients I’m speaking to in San Francisco and Seattle are doing the same calculation,” says Yash Dubal, CEO and Director at AY & J Solicitors, London.
As uncertainty surrounding the H-1B visa program continues to grow, many foreign professionals are exploring alternative immigration pathways. While Canada’s Express Entry system and Australia’s General Skilled Migration program remain among the most popular options for Indian professionals, immigration experts in the United Kingdom say they are seeing increased interest from H-1B visa holders in the U.S. seeking the UK Global Talent Visa, particularly following the introduction of the proposed $100,000 H-1B visa fee.
Yash Dubal, CEO and director of London-based A Y & J Solicitors, tells The American Bazaar the shift is being driven largely by highly skilled Indian professionals who have spent years waiting for permanent residency in the United States.
“Most of our enquiries from the US come from Indian engineers and researchers, often in their thirties and on a H-1B visa. Usually their spouses are on H-4 visa and they have US born children. They have been waiting on green cards for years. The Global Talent Visa is the first route they have looked at where their professional record actually translates into a timeline,” Dubal said.
Introduced in 2020 as part of the UK’s post-Brexit immigration system, the Global Talent Visa has gained traction because of its flexibility and relatively fast route to settlement.
The visa is available to individuals who have demonstrated exceptional talent, are recognized as leaders or potential leaders, or show exceptional promise in their field.
Unlike the Skilled Worker visa, the Global Talent Visa is tied to the individual rather than an employer. Holders can work for any company, change jobs without reapplying, freelance, consult, or start a business. There is no minimum salary requirement, no job offer requirement, and no employer sponsorship is needed.
What makes the visa particularly attractive to professionals currently in the United States is the prospect of a significantly shorter path to permanent residency.
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Dubal explained, “the April 2026 Visa Bulletin set the EB-2 India date at July 2014, which means a fourteen-year wait for a green card. The UK Global Talent Visa gets you to settlement in three. It is not a more emotional decision than that. It is arithmetic. The clients I’m speaking to in San Francisco and Seattle are doing the same calculation.”
Still, like most professional immigration pathways, the Global Talent Visa comes with eligibility requirements.
The visa covers a range of high-skilled fields, with applicants assessed by designated endorsing bodies across areas including digital technology; academia and research; natural and medical sciences; engineering; humanities and social sciences; and arts and culture.
The application process itself is relatively straightforward and consists of two stages: obtaining an endorsement from the relevant body, followed by the visa application. According to immigration consultants, the UK Global Talent Visa offers several advantages over the H-1B visa. Unlike the H-1B, which is employer-sponsored, lottery-based, and subject to an annual cap of 85,000 visas, the Global Talent Visa is evidence-based and uncapped. For highly skilled professionals who qualify, it can also provide a pathway to settlement in the United Kingdom in as little as three years.
One of the biggest challenges facing H-1B holders, particularly Indian and Chinese nationals, is the lengthy wait for permanent residency, which can stretch into decades because of green card backlogs.
Against that backdrop, immigration advisers say interest in alternative pathways has increased, particularly following last year’s introduction of the proposed $100,000 H-1B visa fee. Dubal said he has seen a noticeable uptick in inquiries since the announcement.
“What changed in October [2025] is not policy alone. The political volatility around H-1B has not stopped, even with the recent court ruling on the hundred-thousand-dollar fee. Indian professionals are no longer treating uncertainty in the US as a temporary problem to wait out. They are treating it as a feature of the system and acting accordingly,” he said.
To qualify for the Global Talent Visa, applicants must first obtain an endorsement from an approved UK body before submitting their visa application. Dubal said many prospective applicants underestimate how close they may be to meeting the requirements.
“Indian engineers applying to us are often closer to qualifying than they assume. What I see most often now is families running parallel options. Indian H-1B holders are not abandoning the US plan. They are putting a UK plan alongside it, as a hedge. The choice between three years to UK settlement and another decade of uncertainty in the US becomes harder to defer once it is sitting on the page.”