How much does it cost a company to sponsor a visa in the UK?

Immigration Solicitors in London have always been called by many small businesses and charitable organisations that want to sponsor workers to fill places where they are facing skills shortage but have stressed that the cost of sponsorship is just too much.

Best Immigration Solicitors in London says that the cost of sponsoring an employee has touched the sky. It is essential that organisations should be aware of the associated costs of sponsorship under Tier 2. UK Visa and Immigration conducts different types of research about your business and decides whether to permit your application for a licence or not. The factors are as follows:

Criminal Records and Civil Penalties – Your license application will be directly revoked if the authority finds any criminal records against you or penalties which you have to pay to become liable free. You will be sent to jail if found guilty of doing illicit activities.

Human Resource Systems –  The Home Office will come to examine that you have correctly managed systems through which you know when a migrant has started working or not. This system also includes the information of an employee that their stay in Britain is coming to an end or not.

Sponsored Workers Information – This procedure consists of questions like – Whether you are recruiting any migrants which are sponsored legally or not? Whether they are overworking or not?

Employment Generation – Based on Tier 2 sponsor licences, the authority will analyze whether you can offer actual employment which satisfies the Tier 2 General standards on skill category and acceptable rates of salary or income.

Above mentioned factors makes it very evident that the Home Office implement sponsor duties and responsibilities to become informed of dishonest or incompetent sponsors instantly, and withdraw their licenses and penalise them. They can charge any sponsors that halt the legal guidelines by unlawful working.

What is the cost involved in obtaining a sponsor licence?

An organisation will be analyzed to be a small company if it fulfils the explanation set out within Section 382 of The Companies Act 2006. To meet this description, a company has to meet at least two of them:

• The firm must have a maximum of less than the turnover of £10.2 million.
• The balance sheet total of the firm should be no more than £5.1 million.
• The firm should have only 50 employees.

If an organisation fulfils at least two requirements, it will be ranked as a small company, otherwise, it will be asked to pay the higher fee same as larger companies when applying for a sponsor licence.

An organisation will also automatically be ranked as a large company if it is a:

• insurance company;
• public company;
• banking company; or
• an e-money issuer.

Now, the fee payable for small companies to receive a licence is £536 and it will be £1,476 for large companies.

The employer will have to pay for each certificate of sponsorship. You will get the certificates for free if you are giving the certificates to people of Macedonia, Croatia and Turkey. The cost of every certificate of Tier 2 visa is £199 and Tier 5 is £21. It does not include immigration health surcharge fees.

The cost of the immigration health surcharge is £624 per year for different visas (excluding applicants who are under 18 or coming through Tier 5 youth mobility scheme) which also depends on the number of leaves granted on your visa. The Immigration Health Surcharge is allowed to fund the healthcare system of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), which you will be able to take benefit of when living in the UK.