UK Immigration Sponsorship System Continues to Evolve

From November 2008, the United Kingdom will implement a radically new immigration system for employing workers from outside the European Economic Area.

• Employers will need to be licensed as sponsors by the UK Border Agency (UKBA) to bring in, or to renew the immigration status of, these migrant workers after the November start date.
• Employers will not be licensed unless they can demonstrate that they can track, monitor and report to UKBA on their migrant worker population.
• Migrant workers will need to demonstrate that they meet the requirements of the immigration rules, including that they have enough points to qualify for the immigration category for which they are applying.

UKBA is providing large amounts of formal and informal guidance about this new system, but not all of the pieces of this system are in place yet. This update presents some of the current developments in the creation of this sponsorship system.

• On July 28, the Border Agency published a Sponsorship Guidance document. This document supplements and updates the Tier 2 Statement of Intent and the Licensing Guidance previously published. (Tier 2 is the counterpart to the current work permit system, which will cease in November). 
• UKBA received 344 license applications by July 31. Estimates of the number of sponsor applications that may need to be filed range from 10,000 upwards.
• A UKBA on-site inspection of each applicant's HR system is currently part of the pre-license determination process. Inspection visits are taking from one to three hours each.
• Of the unsuccessful applications so far, the most common reason for failure has been the inability of the employer to show that its HR systems were sufficiently compliant with the duties of sponsorship. (Those duties include: monitoring the immigration status of workers; maintaining contact details of employees subject to immigration controls; record-keeping; and migrant tracking and reporting.)
• If, during a pre-license inspection, UKBA discovers that the employer is employing workers without appropriate immigration authorisation, UKBA will use its powers to assess civil penalties and, in more serious cases, seek criminal prosecutions.
• UKBA has floated the idea of imposing a deadline of October 1 after which time UKBA will not guarantee that sponsorship applications will be processed for what is expected to be the late November launch of the Tier 2 system.