UK to look at decoupling visas from employers
Key Points
- Lords committee "alarmed" by reports of visa sponsor abuse
- Says abuse exposes thousands to penury and delays settlement
- Backs decoupling visas from employers and tying them to sectors
- Migrants switching firms would repay sponsorship costs, prorated
- Calls refugee employment outcomes "woeful", urges targeted schemes
A House of Lords committee has said it is alarmed by reports of visa sponsor abuse and has backed proposals to decouple migrants’ visas from individual employers and tie them instead to sectors.
In its report published on Tuesday (23 June), the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee said that abuse within the sponsorship system was actively harming integration, exposing thousands of people to penury, preventing full participation in the labour market and delaying settlement.
Those tied to sponsors, it said, were ultimately being stopped from integrating into British society.
The committee supported calls to decouple visas from sponsors and tie them to sectors instead. To protect sponsors who have paid sponsorship fees, it proposed that migrants switching companies would be required to pay back sponsorship costs, prorated over the year.
The recommendation sits within the committee’s wider examination of work as a route to integration.
The report endorsed the principle that “immigration works where immigrants work”, describing employment as a crucial enabler of integration and welcoming the government’s focus on work as part of earned settlement.
The committee cautioned, however, that such an approach risked excluding some groups and could have a disproportionate impact on women and refugees.
Employment outcomes for refugees were described in the report as woeful, with women continuing to see poorer work outcomes than men.
The committee said this represented both a missed opportunity and a burden on the state, and argued that investment in employment training and opportunities for refugees and women would save money in the long run through higher tax receipts and reduced welfare spending.
The committee called on the government to reintroduce employment schemes specifically targeting refugees, such as the Refugee Transitions Outcomes Fund and the Refugees Employability Programme, and to explore how to improve employment support for migrant women.
The report also stressed that the responsibility ran in both directions.
While the government must support migrants and refugees to access opportunities to work, the committee said, migrants must take them.
