Migrant solicitor forced to leave UK after failing to meet £41,700 salary threshold

LONDON Dec 17: A migrant solicitor who has helped numerous Black, Asian and minority ethnic women pursue careers in law has been forced to return to Ghana after failing to meet the UK’s £41,700 annual salary requirement for a skilled worker visa, the Law Gazette has reported.

H Kwoffie arrived in the UK in 2016 on a student visa. She studied law at university before completing an LPC MSc in law, business and management. After graduating, she secured a graduate visa, allowing her to work in the UK for two years. During this time, she worked as a paralegal specialising in community care and mental health law and later obtained a training contract focused on mental health law.

“When I was coming to the UK, I didn’t know there was something called legal aid. But I always knew from a young age that I wanted to be a lawyer and help the most vulnerable in society,” Kwoffie said.

With just six weeks remaining on her training contract, Kwoffie’s graduate visa expired. To remain in the UK, she needed to switch to a skilled worker visa, but her salary fell short of the £41,700 threshold.

On the advice of an immigration solicitor, Kwoffie applied for a visa on compassionate grounds, spending £5,000 on legal fees, the application fee and the immigration health surcharge. Because she submitted the application before her graduate visa expired, she was permitted to continue working while awaiting a decision.

During this period, she completed her training contract, joined another firm, became an accredited member of the Law Society’s mental health tribunal panel and founded The BAME Woman in Law, an initiative supporting Black, Asian and minority ethnic women entering the legal profession.

Despite believing she had a strong case, Kwoffie was informed in August — 18 months after submitting her application — that her visa had been refused. She had no right of appeal. “The firm let me go and I had to leave the UK on 17 August. I had to quickly box my life up and come back to Ghana,” she said.

Kwoffie cannot practise as a lawyer in Ghana without completing law school there. Considering possible routes back to the UK, she noted that the global talent visa appears to be geared more towards professionals in the arts rather than lawyers.

Her experience has renewed attention on low legal aid pay. Mental health lawyers have not received a fee uplift since 1996, and fees were cut by 10% in 2011. Law Society data published this year shows that the number of legal aid offices taking on mental health cases has almost halved since 2011.