Monday, November 14, 2005

Nobel Laureate Migrant Workers wanted!

The UK has a visa program for highly skilled migrant workers called the Highly Skilled Migrant Worker Program (HSMP).
It is a point based system and if you have more than 65 points then you qualify for it and you get a work permit (yay!). But according to the HSMP points counter at: http://www.workpermit.com/uk/hsmp_calculator.htm
the kind of migrant workers expected to apply are nothing short of geniuses in their field. Here is why.... below is the explination (and I quote!) of what 'Outstanding Achievement in your chosen field' means:

Examples of Outstanding achievements (25 points) - this is a category which applies only to very small numbers of internationally recognised individuals, and include people who have achieved the following:

  • Receipt of a Nobel Prize
  • Receipt of an Oscar, BAFTA, or Palm D'Or
  • Receipt of a significant international prize such as the Booker prize
  • Winning an Olympic medal
  • Achievement of a major sporting world record
  • Running a large publicly quoted company
  • Election to the premiership (or, in some circumstances, cabinet or supreme court) of any democratic country or international organisation such as the UN, World Bank, IMF, Commonwealth
  • Establishing a significant company - to prove that a privately held company is significant may require evidence beyond that included in publicly filed accounts
  • Designing an internationally recognised building (such as the Sydney opera house, petronus towers, Guggenheim museum in Bilbao)

Damn a Nobel is worth only 25 points and ditto for winning an Olympic medal. Also I bet the designers of the Guggenheim museum or the Sydney Opera house would be kicking themselves for going through so much pain coz a PhD and three years of graduate level work experience would have given them the same number of points (I kid you not!).