Is Your Business Immigration Compliant?

Most of us are gearing towards 2021 and what it will bring after such a difficult 2020.

One thing for sure is the new #immigration rules that will come into force on 1 December 2020 for non-EEA nationals and 1 January 2021 for EEA nationals.

Whilst sponsor licencing and immigration compliance is unlikely one of the top priorities for anyone to be thinking about, employers need to know that there are subtle but vast changes that are taking place. These changes could impact your business and your responsibility as a sponsor or potential sponsor licence holders.

What is immigration compliance?

Essentially, immigration #compliance is a system that you put in place to ensure that you meet the duties required of you (as an employer) under the current immigration rules and legislation in place, for example, the need for the check a person's status to work in the UK when you employ them.

For some, immigration compliance goes far beyond checking the immigration status of your employees but maintaining an effective control system to monitor workers who require a visa to work in the UK, i.e. Skilled Workers.

The Home Office has numerous guidance on this from have detailed packs on "Prevention of Illegal Working" to the introduction of a three series guide on Sponsor Licencing.

All these packs amount to hundreds of pages (all very useful but lengthy), designed to ensure that employers do not fall foul of the rules. However, as valuable as these packs are, one wonders how many employers have ready all of these packs?

The simple answer is not a lot. Not because employers are complacent (at least the majority of the employers aren't), it's because they do not have the time to work through another set of documents for what is another administrative task. Understandably, employers want to concentrate on what's more important, the business and its employees.

What employers need to understand is that immigration compliance is essential for the business and should not be seen as something separate from the business. If employers spend just a short (might well be painful) a few hours in designing a system to meet any immigration compliance requirements, it will run seamlessly with other workflows.

The key is knowing and understanding the rules and guidance and applying these into practice.

At Shores & Legal, we continually strive to serve our #Community, and we have always been passionate about helping with #Start-ups and #SMEs. As such, our team is offering complimentary #workshops to qualifying start-ups and SMEs in providing them with immigration compliance training and to answer questions they may have about immigration compliance. A member of our team will visit you on-site (virtually) to deliver a short training and provide you with ample time to put any immigration-related questions to us. Where we can, we will also offer recommendations as to how you can devise a more effective compliance system for your business.

We will be offering five free workshops per month between 1 January 2021 to 31 March 2021.

For SMEs that are not offered a free workshop, we have allocated five workshops per month between 1 February 2021 to 30 April 2021 at less than 20% of standard fees at £250 + VAT.

Please note that qualifying SMEs are defined as:

- 250 or fewer employees

- Holds a Sponsor Licence

- Have at least one active worker who holds a Tier 2 visa, Skilled Worker Visa or Intra-Company Transfer visa

- Annual turnover of £40 million or less or a balance-sheet total of not exceeding £34 million

Shores & Legal are experienced and expert immigration partners for your business and personal immigration requirements. We help companies with identifying their immigration compliance gaps and helping business set up and operate an effective immigration compliance programme. If you wish to discuss your UK immigration requirements, contact us at +44 (0) 207 097 6778 or info@shoreslegal.com