KPMG UK has cancelled employment offers for certain foreign graduates in the UK after the government strengthened visa requirements for abroad workers in an effort to reduce record immigration.
According to documents seen by the Financial Times, the Big Four firm, one of the UK's largest graduate employers, informed affected incoming staff this week that their offers had been rescinded, citing the government's decision to raise the minimum salary required to sponsor a skilled worker visa in the UK.
According to the documents, KPMG stated that the changes to eligibility criteria had “unfortunately impacted some of our graduate programmes that were previously eligible for sponsorship under the skilled worker visa category”. The firm refuses to share the number of offers that had been cancelled.

Impact of Stricter Visa Regulations on UK Professional Services Sector

The decision demonstrates how Britain's professional services business is dealing with stricter regulations regarding the hiring of abroad personnel. It comes as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's administration takes a tougher stance on immigration in the run-up to the general election, which his Conservative party is anticipated to lose.
In January, the government announced that it would raise the income threshold for highly qualified employees from £26,200 to £38,700 in April, and to £30,960 for those under the age of 26.
Graduates who had their offers withdrawn were informed that they would not be allowed to defer their spots until 2025. They had the option to request transfer to a different graduation programme this year, but only if registrations were still open on the firm's website and “the role is eligible for sponsorship”.
According to one source familiar with the situation, KPMG, which hired 1,400 graduates and apprentices this past year, would fill the now-vacant graduate positions with people who are legally allowed to work in the UK.
In January, Tom Pursglove, minister for legal migration, stated that the immigration changes, which included new restrictions on care workers bringing dependents to the UK, would “tackle the inherent unfairness of a system that, if left untouched, would reward employers seeking to recruit cheap labour from overseas at the expense of the British worker.”

KPMG refused to issue any comment on the matter. Separately, the Big Four corporation announced that it would begin recruiting additional former convicts after a two-year experiment that was hailed as “very positive”.

Source: https://en.econostrum.info/kpmg-uk-revokes-foreign-graduate-job-offers/