Immigration and employment regulations are each complex in their own right. Combine the two and it becomes incredibly difficult to ensure that your business stays on the right side of the law.
On top of complexity, they are constantly changing, with the rules on procedures and compliance shifting along with the latest amendments to legislation. If you don’t keep pace with the newest rules on immigration and employment, your business could face legal action, hefty fines and severe reputational damage.
The team of expert immigration solicitors at Truth Legal can provide advice which is cost effective and up to the minute, explaining current regulations and predicting any future shifts. We simplify the process of remaining compliant in a cost effective and practical manner.
Whether you outsource your entire HR function or turn to us for specialised assistance, we’re ready to provide the support you need – Contact us TODAY.
Why Your Business Needs Immigration HR Support
Specialised immigration HR support is vitally important for any business which relies on hiring employees from other countries.
Immigration and employment are both highly complex areas of the law, and your processes need to be compliant with the latest regulations for a number of reasons:
- Not having the right immigration HR processes in place could make the process of employing people from other countries more time consuming, complex and costly than it needs to be
- A lax approach to immigration HR could discourage people from other countries from joining, making it harder to find the best person for the job
- Failure to comply could lead to civil legal action, up to and including hefty fines
- Being found guilty of non-compliance with immigration and/or employment regulations – even if it happens accidentally – could cause huge damage to your reputation as an employer, particularly of people from other countries
The key benefits of immigration HR training for your business are as follows:
Legal Compliance
Ensuring that your HR team is versed in the complexities of UK immigration laws. Revising the training on a regular basis will ensure that your team is fully up to speed with any changes in the law which have been introduced, or are due to be introduced.
Risk Mitigation
By making sure that your processes and procedures around matters such as right-to-work checks and visa sponsorships are fully compliant, immigration HR training will mitigate against the risk of legal issues. As mentioned above, these risks could include costly penalty notices, as well as workplace disruption and reputational damage.
Operational Efficiency
Knowledge is power, and a well-trained HR team will be able to streamline the process of hiring workers from other countries. By cutting the time between identifying the workers you need and welcoming them to your workforce, your HR team will contribute to the smooth running and growth of your business.
Enhanced Employee Experience
A quick and simple onboarding experience for foreign-based workers, allied to confidence in the legal compliance of your processes, will greatly enhance employee morale. In addition, it will mark your business out as an appealing employer, making it easier to attract the best international talent in your field.
Specialised immigration HR support could help with the complex process of dealing with issues such as visas, work permits and sponsor licences. Our experts could advise your business as a whole and the individuals moving from other countries to work for you.
How our Immigration Law team can help YOU
At the most basic level, we can help with filling out the many complex items of paperwork required and ensuring that all documentation needed is provided in the correct form. Staying on top of every shift or tweak in immigration and employment law is our job – we can handle your immigration HR from top to bottom if needed, leaving you free to run the rest of your business.
With the right immigration HR in place, you can attract the top tier talent you need without lengthy waiting periods and frustrating delays. In overarching terms, expert immigration HR advice can feed into your long term employment strategies, enabling you to plan talent acquisition on a global basis.
If your business operates in multiple territories, specialised immigration HR support can help when you want to transfer employees between different locations. As well as handling the paperwork and dealing with the legal ramifications of such transfers, we can help any individual employees who want to apply for permanent residency and stay long term.
Our Immigration HR Support Services
Our specialist immigration HR support can advise on all issues which impact the topics of immigration law and employment law.
Specific issues around which we can provide expert support include the following:
Sponsor Licence Application and Management
As an employer you need to have a Sponsor Licence to employ a worker from another country. To apply for a Sponsor Licence, you will need to demonstrate to the Home Office that you are an established UK business, and that you have systems in place to monitor sponsored workers.
Applications are made online and the fee which is payable will depend upon the size of your business. We can explain the requirements – such as the latest skill levels and salary thresholds that are in place – and help with the application itself.
Sponsoring Intra-Company Transfer workers via the Senior or Specialist Worker route
Intra-company transfer is a route via which your business can transfer graduate trainees and established members of staff from a parent company outside the UK to an entity based in the UK. Formerly known as the Intra-Company Transfer (or ICT) route, this has been replaced by the Senior or Specialist Worker route, under the Global Business Mobility suite.
We can explain the requirements for transfers of this kind, which include the following:
- Established members of staff can be transferred to a job at degree level or above.
- They must have worked for the parent company outside the UK for at least 12 months, unless they earn over £73,900 per year.
- Otherwise, they must earn at least £48,000 per year. In either case they must meet the ‘going rate’ for the given job code.
Under the Senior or Specialist Worker route, you can bring workers to your business in the UK for as long as 5 years in any 6 year period, or 9 years in any 10 for high earners.
This route does NOT lead to indefinite leave to remain, also known as settlement.
Right-to-Work Checks and Compliance Audits
When the Home Office issues a Sponsor Licence – a process explained above – they delegate the work of monitoring sponsored workers to you as their employer. Our immigration support HR experts can help to manage the operation of Sponsor Licences.
Under the latest Home Office guidance, your duties as an employer with workers from other countries will include keeping records of the contact details of sponsored employees, recording their attendance and reporting things such as a change in job title or duties or the termination of those duties.
Running a mock-compliance audit is the surest means of ensuring that your processes are set up to meet all of your duties as a licence holder. Our expertise in immigration HR support means that we can run audits of this kind, checking all aspects of your immigration HR and other processes which touch on employment law.
Issues covered by a mock-audit of this kind will include the right to work checks which need to be carried out on employees, on-going monitoring of employees status and how to track and report any relevant changes.
Regular audits of compliance are vital as the Home Office can visit the premises of a licence hold to gather in situ evidence that all of your duties as a licence holder are being met. Any failure could lead to sanctions including your Sponsor Licence being revoked.
As well as ensuring that compliance is maintained, including when changes in the rules are introduced, we can advise on the steps needed to challenge any Sponsor Licence suspension or revocation.
Civil Penalty Support
In the worst case scenario – particularly if you have employed workers from other countries without accessing specialised immigration HR support – you could find your business being issued with a Referral Notice or Civil Penalty Notice. If this happens, our immigration HR lawyers could help you with issues such as:
- Challenging the Civil Penalty Notice
- The statutory deadlines in place for responding to a notice
We can also assist in reasons why the Civil Penalty Notice has been issued. This could be because an employee:
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- Hadn’t been granted permission to enter or remain in the UK
- Relied on legal documents which were false or incorrect
- Was still in the UK despite the fact that their leave to remain had expired
- Was not permitted to undertake the particular work they were doing
A Notice could also be issued because you, as employer, knew or had ‘reasonable cause to believe’ that an employee didn’t have the right to work in the UK. You could also be penalised in this way for failing to carry out checks on the immigration status of an employee, or doing so incorrectly.
The amount of a Civil Penalty will vary:
- For a breach occurring after 13th February 2024 – £45,000 for each illegal worker for a first breach and £60,000 per worker for each repeated breach
- For a breach occurring before 13th February 2024 – £15,000 for each illegal worker for a first breach and £20,000 per worker for each repeated breach
If you’ve been issued with a Civil Penalty notice, our immigration HR support lawyers could advise on seeking to have the fine reduced on the basis of mitigating factors such as:
- You reported suspicions about the alleged illegal worker
- You actively co-operated with the UKVI (UK Visas and Immigration)
- You otherwise have effective recruitment policies in place
We could also provide expert help with any challenge to a Civil Penalty. An Objection to a penalty needs to be made within 28 days, while a Fast Payment made within 21 days reduces the amount of the fine by 30%. The full Civil Penalty can also be paid via instalments over a period of 28 days.
Failure to pay a Civil Penalty will trigger debt recovery action being taken through the County Court, leading to a County Court Judgement (CCJ) which will negatively impact your credit rating.
Visa and Work Permit Support
Our immigration HR lawyers can help with the latest details of the visa and work permit system. The features of the points-based system which is currently in place include the following:
- The applicant must have a job offer from an employer with a Sponsor Licence
- The applicant must have a job at the skill level required
Skilled Worker Visa
The team at Truth Legal can provide support when you’re applying for a skilled worker visa, beginning with the Sponsor Licence requirement and then working through the criteria which apply to the employee.
The current skill level required is RQF Level 3, the equivalent to a UK A level.
A list of the occupations that qualify for a skilled worker visa is available online published by the UKVI.
Workers must be able to demonstrate that they can speak English at CEFR level B1. This can be done by passing an approved test or having been awarded a degree taught in English
Currently the minimum salary a worker generally needs to be earning is £38,700 per annum or the going rate for the job in question – whichever of the two is higher. There are ways in which a shortfall in the salary earned can be made up elsewhere.
As long as the salary is at least £30,960, the applicant can make up the shortfall in points needed for a visa in other ways, such as working in an occupation at PhD level, or one in which there is a skills shortage.
Workers who spend 5 years in the UK via the Skilled Worker Visa route can then apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain in the country. They can also bring their partner and any children under the age of 18 to live in the UK as dependants (although care workers unfortunately cannot bring dependants following the rule change on 11 February 2024)
Ongoing HR Compliance Training
We can play a key role in ensuring that your immigration HR processes continue to comply with immigration and employment regulations as they evolve, by delivering comprehensive training on the full range of relevant issues. The training will be tailored to your requirements and delivered in the most convenient manner – whether that’s in-person or online.
The issues covered in our training include the following:
- A general overview of immigration regulations and maintaining compliance in your processes
- The future of immigration and employment legislation
- The application process for a sponsor licence and for skilled worker visas
- How the regulations around the right to work in the UK are applied
- How to relocate existing employees from a parent company outside the UK
Tailored Legal Support for Key Challenges in Employment & Immigration Law
Our wide ranging experience of providing immigration HR support has taught us that every business is unique, as are the issues that business is likely to face.
There are, however, common challenges which tend to arise around employment and immigration law in general.
These key challenges are as follows:
Ensuring on-going compliance with evolving UK employment laws
We know from experience that working to comply with UK employment laws is a task which is never completed. The laws on everything from workers’ rights to national insurance payments are constantly shifting and evolving.
Staying on top of the latest rules and regulations at the same time as running your business can be difficult and time consuming. Working with the experts at Truth Legal means that we take on the task of making sure your processes are always compliant.
At the time of writing, for example, the Employment Rights Bill 2024-25 is making its way through parliament. Areas of employment law due to be reformed once the bill is passed include family leave, statutory sick pay, unfair dismissal, flexible working, trade union law and protections against harassment.
Our expert HR support will help your business to prepare for any changes in employment law before they come into force. We can advise on your rights and responsibilities under any new legislation, and work with you to minimise the risk of non-compliance.
Managing disputes and grievances
Even in the best run workplaces, disputes and grievances can arise. If you need to take disciplinary action against an employee, or an employee has raised a grievance via a formal complaint, we can support you through the process of seeking a resolution.
Our legal expertise around employment law is combined with a sensitive and empathetic approach to workplace disputes, enabling us to mediate in a way which is intended to minimise the risk of escalation and the necessity for legal action to be taken. Any disciplinary action you take which isn’t fair and completely lawful could compromise your legal position in the longer term and our advice will help to stop that from happening.
We can also audit existing grievance procedures and ensure that you have processes and a framework in place to nip any future problems in the bud. The provision of disciplinary and grievance procedures is a requirement for all UK employers, and we can ensure that yours are clear, fit for purpose and easily accessed by employees.
Understanding immigration rules for hiring foreign workers
Our grasp of the immigration rules for hiring foreign works is comprehensive, detailed and fully up to date. As an employer focussed on running your business as smoothly as possible, staying on top of the ever-shifting rules and regulations is bound to be tricky.
Our expert immigration employment lawyers provide a dedicated HR service, monitoring any developments in the regulations and working with you and your employees to ensure full compliance. You can seek out the best people for the key roles in your business, safe in the knowledge that the relevant visas, licences and work permits are in place.
Common individual challenges with Immigration Law
As well as the above we can also assist with individual challenges such as:
Visa refusals and sponsorship issues
If a work visa is refused out immigration HR lawyers can advise on the next steps to take. These might include a pre-action protocol letter, an administrative review, a judicial review or an appeal.
We can support the individual employee concerned, as well as offering expert HR advice to your business as a whole. If there are issues which delay or block an application for a Sponsor Licence, we can work through your application to identify and rectify any mistakes.
If the rules have changed recently around compliance or the assurances you need to provide, our immigration lawyers will be on top of the changes and will explain exactly what you need to do.
Discrimination and unfair dismissal cases
Our expert employment law lawyers have successfully advised multiple individuals in cases of unfair dismissal (https://truthlegal.com/employment-disputes/employment-law-for-individuals/wrongful-dismissal-claims/) or discrimination at work (https://truthlegal.com/employment-disputes/employment-law-for-individuals/discrimination-at-work-claims/). As such, they are ideally placed to advise on how to avoid facing claims of this kind in the first place.
With our expert advice you’ll be able to put the right procedures and processes in place in order to comply with employment law and the regulations on the treatment of protected characteristics.
What’s Included in Our Immigration HR Training?
The specific areas covered in our immigration HR training include the following:
UK Immigration Law – An Overview
We will provide a comprehensive overview of UK immigration law, including issues like Sponsor Licences, Skilled Worker Visas and the various Global Business Mobility routes. We’ll also cover the risks of not complying with UK immigration law – in terms of operational efficiency, legal action and reputational damage – and the benefits of carrying out regular compliance audits.
Sponsor Licence Duties and Compliance
We’ll look at the process of sponsoring workers from outside the UK via a Sponsor Licence. The training will cover the criteria for a Sponsor Licence, the application process itself and the monitoring and reporting systems which need to be in place.
Our training will cover Sponsor Licence duties and compliance. Those duties include the following:
- Making sure that all information on the Sponsor Licence application form is true, and that the evidence supporting this information is retained
- Keeping accurate records of all non-UK workers employed by your business, including their current address and immigration status
- Maintaining an up to date Sponsor Management system
- Preventing any abuse of the system
- Capturing any patterns of employee behaviour which may be concerning with regard to UK immigration law
The Future of Immigration
Our training covers the future of immigration with specific regard to the laws and regulations likely to be changed or introduced. As experts in the field, our immigration HR lawyers monitor developments in UK immigration law closely, and will be able to deliver informed analysis of both the broad direction of travel and specific changes which can be expected.
Right to Work Checks
Our training also covers right-to-work check procedures in depth. If your business employs workers from overseas, you have to carry out right to work checks to verify that they have a legal right to work in the UK.
Failure to do so can expose you to severe penalties, including hefty fines. Robust right to work checks offer a safeguard against this risk, and failure to carry them out would be a breach of your sponsor duties.
Online Right to Work Checks
Employers have been obligated to perform online right-to-work checks on individuals holding a biometric residence permit (BRP) or biometric residence card (BRC) since April 6, 2022. Simply photocopying the individual’s residence document is no longer acceptable. The Government also now routinely issues ‘e-visas’ that can only be accessed online.
This requirement extends to individuals registered under the EU Settlement Scheme, who must also undergo online right-to-work checks.
Your employee (or prospective employee) will need to generate a ‘share code,’ which can be obtained through this website. If the employee does not have a UKVI account (e.g., if they have a partner visa), they must obtain their share code through this website instead. Using the share code and the individual’s date of birth, you can conduct an online right-to-work check. Access the online right-to-work site here.
It’s important to note that when conducting an online right-to-work check, you still need to verify that the photograph provided online matches the individual. This verification can be done either in person or through a video call. Be sure to retain evidence of the check by saving the online page as a PDF.
If the worker’s leave to remain (visa) has a time limit, remember that you’ll need to perform a follow-up right-to-work check before their leave expires.
Visa Extensions and the Employer Checking Service
When someone has submitted a visa extension application, but the application is pending, how can you prove their right to work? In this situation, their leave to remain may appear to have expired on paper or digitally, but if they submitted their extension in time, their leave is legally considered ongoing.
This scenario often arises when you are considering a new hire or have an existing employee claiming to have submitted an in-time extension application. In such cases, the Employer Checking Service can be invaluable.
To use the Employer Checking Service, you will need to complete an online form with the individual’s details. If the individual is confirmed to have a right to work, you will receive a Positive Verification Notice, providing you with protection from civil penalties for six months.
Learn more about the Employer Checking Service and how to navigate visa extension here.
Best Practices for Managing International Employees
Our training on managing international employees covers everything from ensuring compliance around licences, visas and work permits, to supporting employees on an individual basis and overhauling or fine-tuning your in-house immigration HR support.
This training is driven by hands-on experience of working with multiple businesses employing workers from overseas, delivering immigration employment help which is informed, up to date and practical.
Case Studies and Practical Exercises
To underline the fact that our HR and immigration training is based on practical experience of working with UK based businesses employing workers from across the globe, we draw on a huge archive of case studies and real world examples.
We’ve used our own experiences in the complex area of immigration and employment support to create practical exercises designed to demonstrate the workings of regulations and legislation. It’s training which delivers through ‘doing’ as well as learning, equipping your HR team with the confidence to tackle the issues they are likely to face.
Throughout our immigration HR training we provide materials such as training manuals, checklists and compliance templates, all of which will deepen the understanding of your HR team of this complex area of business and law.
