In the newest episode of Immigration & Mobility Decoded, we sat down with Antonio Lam, the Director of UK Immigration at Envoy Global.
This year is shaping up to include many changes for the UK immigration system, particularly around the sponsor licence.
Antonio breaks some of these changes down and provides insights that employers need to know. Below is a brief, and lightly edited transcript of this conversation.
Immigration & Mobility Decoded:
Can you just give us an overview of the current UK immigration generally, how does it operate and what are some key things to know?
Antonio Lam:
The majority of people that we deal with are mostly employees wanting to move to the UK or globally for that matter, or businesses need to transfer workers from one country to another. And UK tends to be a fairly popular destination, to say the very least. But in terms of usual immigration route, it’s fairly similar to the rest of the world. We’ve got your personal immigration routes and then you’ve got your work route. But for the work route, it sounds very complicated, but it can be very complicated. But most of the time we are really looking at whether it’s sponsored work or not sponsored work. That’s sort of how the system work in terms of basic working corporate business immigration.
Antonio Lam:
For a majority of employers that are hiring overseas workers, they would have a license under various routes. So we’ve got the skilled worker route, for example, or the global business mobility route. And the workers will hold a visa based on those categories effectively to allow to work in the UK. It really depends obviously of the need of the individual, but you can have temporary transfers, which can be up to five or nine years effectively. And of course it can be permanent move as well. But I think one of the interesting things about the UK is they don’t just offer one route or you have one work route or two work routes. They have a stream of different work routes.
Antonio Lam:
I touched on having a skilled worker or global business mobility, I mean just big global business mobility itself has several streams of different things that we look at, and some are very temporary, like 12 months or 24 months to non-sponsored route. We’re talking about scale up workers, a scale up visa rather, and they celebrate talent so they have a special global talent route. So there’s a plethora of roots and I guess that’s what makes UK immigration system quite exciting.
Immigration & Mobility Decoded:
Right. Does the UK immigration system, do they operate on some of their visas or pathways on a lottery system? The reason I’m asking is over here in the states, we have our big H-1B cap lottery coming up at the start of March, and that one, there’s a finite number, 85,000 visas. Does the UK operate similarly?
Antonio Lam:
Yeah, so at one point, the bygone era, there was a time where what we now know as a skilled worker route tier two effectively back in the day or tier two general as it used to be called, there used to be a cap on the number of web payments effectively per month and so on and so forth. I can’t recall it so many years ago now, but I can’t recall the exact numbers of it. I think it’s 20,000 or 30,000 something along those lines but at the time wasn’t as exciting, I guess, I mean we are only looking at maybe 10 years ago, 12 years ago. But the cap was never reached at any point because there were all these sort of exclusions and stuff. When I talked to my US counterpart, of course, the H-1B season, of course as you say, it’s a very exciting time. Everybody’s pretty stressed out there. But during our time when we had a cap, we were exciting at probably one point when it was announced, and then the cap was never reached, so they scrapped it all together.
Antonio Lam:
So our system is more based on the skill level, the job, salary paid effectively, certain requirements like English language environment to a certain extent, what the job looks like, that type of stuff that we look at in the combination. So it’s a point-based system. Is it actually a point-based system that’s up for argument? Of course. But you have to meet certain points and those points are either you meet it or you don’t. So that’s why I say it’s up for argument in terms of where there’s a real point-based system, but certainly those elements add together to the right points for us to get it. But I think, I suppose there is one sort of lottery system, which is, and I was telling my team earlier today, it’s the effectively that you up with this scheme for Indian professionals or young professionals effectively, and that’s 3000, that’s capped at 3000 foe the season.
Immigration & Mobility Decoded:
Really quickly, what are some of those other drivers that you think are driving up numbers?
Antonio Lam:
I mean, healthcare was definitely one of them and certainly that’s one of the changes that’s going to occur. So during COVID, we realized obviously hey healthcare system really we need a lot more people. And so a lot of those numbers have been driven. We’ve introduced, I think when I say we, as in the UK has introduced the healthcare workers, not just a sort of standard one. So it’s almost a quicker, somebody say easier pathway, but certainly a slightly different pathway into the UK because there is a need in the driver. There are a number of nationals, obviously different nationals that are coming into the UK that’s opened up a lot.
Antonio Lam:
The economy opened up a lot of course. And so the work is not no longer outsources coming back into the UK, and so these foreign nationals office will be needed as well. So there was a boom obviously of, I remember those days where everybody’s opening offices elsewhere other than the UK for example, at one point in time. And so the need was really overseas. So I was for example, dealing with more outbound UK rather than inbound UK. But now we are seeing over the last few years more inbound UK because a lot of businesses are now focusing again UK as a key driver.
Immigration & Mobility Decoded:
What pieces of advice or recommendation, and I know we can’t give too much advice, but I guess just what general tip best practices do you have for employers who maybe are looking to expand or open an office in the UK whether this year, next year or even in the near future?
Antonio Lam:
Well, it is exciting because there is certainly a number of changes. One of the key things to look at, and I’ve been telling everyone actually that I speak about immigration is, hey, by the way, there’s going to be some salary changes and we’ll talk a bit about that I’m sure. Just to look at your workforce, what you need and what the salary levels are. And I think those are good to map out because at the moment a lot of the headline sort of salary levels are pretty low, I would probably say. It’s 26,200 at the moment, it’s going to increase a lot by April.
So a lot of employees will need to look at their workforce again and basically say, “Hey, how do I plan that?” And I think that’s quite important. I also think there’s a huge emphasis on compliance and processes that people haven’t really been, I’m sure a lot of people are looking at, but certainly that’s probably not the priority. And I feel 2024 onwards is all about processes and compliance. So that’s something sort of warning I’d probably say to employers to look at and I think that’s quite an important thing.
Immigration & Mobility Decoded:
Yeah, you mentioned some changes, so I think that’s a perfect segue to the heart of our conversation today. So Antonio, we are recording this on the middle of February of 2024, and we’ll be released in early March partly because there are quite a few impactful changes that we wanted to discuss today. The first one being some sponsor license changes. So first things first, Antonio, can you give us an overview of the UK Sponsor License?
Antonio Lam:
So effectively, a sponsor license is for anyone who necessarily need or is likely to need somebody from overseas to join them or somebody who would require visas to be sponsored by them to work in the UK. So there are two main routes, I would probably say with different sort of categories of it. I would probably call one a permanent one and one a transfer or assignment based route. So one is the skilled worker route that I talked about, which effectively are for, I would say either permanent transfers effectively or those new hires in the UK. So you would want to look at that sort of skilled worker route.
Antonio Lam:
And then for more temporary transfers, I say five years or nine years or sometimes depending on the different routes. So you’ve got expansion worker, you’ve got international agreement, that type of stuff. So it’s very different of high value of contracts. You have a different license on that. There are about I think five routes on that, and that will be the global business mobility, which is really focusing on temporary movements of staff from overseas to the UK or for contractual partners into the UK on 12 month basis, that of stuff. So those are the sort of two things every employee would want to look at when they want to apply for a license effectively.
Antonio Lam:
Most of our clients use both, I would say. It depends on really the need because a lot of times we would counter companies which basically say, “Hey, by the way, there’s a real need for this person to be in the UK project basis for Europe.” And so we would lean towards, depending on the job, depending on the salary and everything else, we tend to lean towards more the global business side. But then we have the other side which is, hey, we’ve seen this amazing talent that we’re going to recruit from within the UK from overseas, and we want them now forever. And so the skilled worker would be something that the device that they look at.
Immigration & Mobility Decoded:
So these changes, there are some changes upcoming on April 6th or 6th of April. Can you break down these changes and the impacts of these changes?
Antonio Lam:
The changes actually sort of occurred or started to move along. So on the 25th of January, any license holders whose license, so it used to be the case that the license is granted for a period of four years and you have to renew every four years. And on 25th of January, anybody who has a license expiry which is beyond 6th of April would be given interim sort of tenure licensing period automatically across the board. So if anyone holds a license, check it out. You should have a 10 year license of whatever expiry that you have. And from the 6th of April, effectively there’s no more need to renew the license, which is quite amazing to most employees, right? Because every time you renew it’s 536 pounds for a small company or 1,476 pounds, at least the cost now, government fee to do that.
But that’s where I sort of heed caution and I guess that’s what the impact of the impact is great. Hey, I don’t have to ever renew it again so I can sleep at night. Yes, you can sleep at night on that side of things, but I guess there is the sort of continual heightened duty I would probably suggest on compliance to making sure that everything is right because I was about to use the terminology that I usually use, but probably it’s copyrighted, so I won’t say it now, but when you have a lot of power, then you have certain things that you need to follow. And compliance is definitely one of those, right?
And I honestly believe that’s true. To be honest, that’s how I sort of run my immigration program for the last 20 years. But it is true, there’s a lot of trust between home office and employer, you are always expected to be compliant, but let’s be honest, compliance is not… Whilst I know 100% of our clients are very clued up on compliance and they really, really want to do it, but it’s also a lot of extra work. But now with license being indefinite, sort of grunt, I would suspect if I was the authorities to say, “Hey, hang on, is there the 1% or the 0.5% of license holder who may not well be very compliant?” And they basically using that because maybe they think that we no longer going to check and they may heighten that activity. And I really feel that that would be heightened and I would encourage everyone to really start looking at their program, start looking at their licensing and then compliance. And I think that’s the biggest impact, I would probably say.
Immigration & Mobility Decoded:
This change came from the home office, is that correct?
Antonio Lam:
Yeah. So it was published on, so anybody who has access to the sponsor management system, which of course if you don’t have access to it as a license holder, I encourage you to have it. You do need it, you should have it, you should log in. But yeah, so it’s published on the literally license front page.
Immigration & Mobility Decoded:
And when this change was originally announced by the home office, what was their justification or reasoning for introducing this change?
Antonio Lam:
To be honest with you, I’m still grappling with what is the justification for that. But I guess in a way, my guess is I’m sure there’s some justification that I haven’t seen or read, but my line of thinking is very simple. It’s actually quite nonsensical in that sense because every employee has a continuing duty, as I say, on noncompliance. They need to fulfill certain rules in order to employ an individual applying for a certificate sponsorship or issuing or signing a certification, whichever may be the case. So the rules are there in place. So is there an actual need to continue to do that? So I think it’s good news in that sense for employers definitely that they no longer need to have that extra bit that they need to schedule on the tracker.
Immigration & Mobility Decoded:
The UK immigration minister recently announced many changes to the country’s immigration rules and a big discussion has been the UK’s electronic travel authorization system, otherwise known as the ETA. Can you discuss why this is being discussed more and more and what some of these changes from the UK immigration minister are?
Antonio Lam:
Yeah, so I mean the ETAs was sort of part of the sort of ad hoc announcement I guess in that sense. It’s been announced for a long time. It’s already sort of in practice, but now put into as the FTS. It’s for five Middle Eastern countries at the moment. I’m sure it’ll be continued to be expanded, that’s the intent of it. But UK generally is going through a digital age or another wave of digital system. So for example, most people who hold the BRP card at the moment, which has the visa expiry beyond 31st of December would see, hey, why is my BRP on the 31st of December, 2024 this year? And do I need to do anything in order of that? But that’s part of the drive by the home office for many years now to make everything digital, and I think that’s the right thing to do.
I just think passports, I think BRP cards, I think physical documents are quite out of fashion for many reasons. They’re not environmentally friendly, but also it’s out of fashion. You’ve got biometrics, you’ve got everything. So I think home office is exactly the same thing. They’re transforming the entire system into e-Visas. So a lot of people already have that e-Visa sort of European nationals. That’s the sort of pioneering point USS, everyone has an E visa at that point. A lot of people who are already based in the UK who already has an e-Visa when they switch visas from within the UK applied for visas if they held a BRP card. So those are moving along.
I think the electronic travel is just part of that process, and that was parallel to this digitalization anyway, is to make well travel easier. There’s no need for vignette printing and all that running out of paper and stickers and whatnot that needs to be done. And the process is much swifter. Obviously it doesn’t negate the need to apply the visas because obviously if the electronic travel decoration doesn’t work, then you still need to apply for the visa, but it just makes life a lot easier, a lot more borderless feel.
Immigration & Mobility Decoded:
Even with all these changes, the UK is still a popular destination for employers and individuals to move to. It is truly one of those global cities that everyone knows, a lot of businesses have offices there or headquarters, et cetera, et cetera. I guess the question is what trends do you see playing out these next few months and even years when it comes to the UK and its approach to immigration and all that good stuff?
Antonio Lam:
I’ve seen a lot of changes over the US. Big, small, political changes, financial, macro economic changes, and we’ve seen quite a lot of those back in crisis back in the day, have we seen a downturn? The answer is, well no. Definitely we have seen peaks and troughs and dips. We’ve seen all of that over the many years and I don’t think these particular changes is going to prevent people from coming to the UK. I think it’ll make it a bit more complex in terms of planning. Salary levels are at all time high in many countries anyway. So we are not the country that will stand out to say, oh my god, it’s the toughest. I think the UK continues to be attractive for many reasons, and immigration, the ease of, to be honest with you, applying despite the general sort of headlines, let’s just say, the ease of application, speed of application, the accessibility of workforce and visa options, well that hasn’t changed. It’s still there.
The only complexity of course is salary ranges and all of that type stuff that will continue to evolve and change as we go along. So we might see a small little temporary dip because people need to readjust and basically say, “Hey, is that the right thing still to do?” But for majority of companies, certainly ones that we’ve encountered so far, again, not mentioning or not discounting what I’ve talked about in terms of the regional firms, but certainly the big headquarters and things they would be looking at as with them looking at the entire global morbidity program is, well, is UK still the place that we want to be? And then we look at other factors. Is UK economy still good ease of business? How easy is it to set up in the UK? UK we can boast is still probably one of the many places that setting up businesses and operating headquarters is still amazing in terms of that, the incentives in the UK, I can go on all day about it. I think that’s the main pull factor of it.
So immigration I think will be one of those consideration, but by comparison to many other countries, U.S. for one for example, or some Asian countries, UK is still pretty accessible. And I think the program is still fairly transparent and clear and I think it’s about certainty as well. I think that’s one of the things because it’s not the case of you need to wait for your visa and you have no clue whether that’s going to be the case or why don’t you come in first and then do this and that. We basically say get your visa first and we can tell you pretty quickly what’s going to happen next. And I think in the next few years we are going to probably experience the same as long as we are politically financially stable, which there’s no reason why we don’t think that will be the case. I think UK will continue to be a very attractive place.
Content in this publication is for informational purposes only and not intended as legal advice, nor should it be relied on as such. For additional information on the issues discussed, consult an attorney at Corporate Immigration Partners, P.C., or another qualified professional of your choosing. On non-U.S. immigration issues, consult your Envoy representative, or another qualified representative of your choosing.
