Hiring students this summer? Check visa requirements, warn lawyers

It’s summer, and for many students it’s a time to take a break and, perhaps, travel abroad before recommencing studies in September or, perhaps, switching course or getting a job. But if those students are visa holders then be aware - this could be a busy time for them, and for you. Many sponsored workers are simply not aware of the rules around renewing or switching their visas and at this time of year that can be problematic for both the sponsored worker and their employer. 

There are a number of issues which our immigration team have been flagging with clients recently, given the time of year, so let’s hear more about that. Earlier, lawyers Shara Pledger and Maria Gravelle joined me by video-link to discuss some of the visa and employment challenges. Shara told me rule one is keeping in touch with the students on your books:  

Shara Pledger: “This is obviously a time for huge transition for students. A lot of them are coming up to graduation, or even ones that perhaps were thinking of doing a course that might be lasting longer might be changing their plans, making new applications, switching their course provider, etcetera. So, it's really important that employers are keeping in touch with any students that they employ. It's good for employers to do that for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because they need to know if something's changing, they might need to renew a right to work check, for example. So, if somebody is moving from one provider to another, or one course to another, and is making a new immigration application that could prompt the need for a new right to work check but, secondly, it might mean that the students are actually able to do a bit more than they could before. So, students who are transitioning into other routes might be able to work full time, but all students who are within their holiday periods during this time of year do have that option for full time work. So, really, it's just a great time for employers to reconnect with that area of their workforce, just make sure that they're familiar with what the conditions are on them and that they're maximising that source of talent, really, because, obviously, this can be a period of time where things get quieter, with full time staff, permanent staff, going on holiday and it might be that the students that they employ can actually pick up some of that slack.”

Joe Glavina: “Can I ask you, Maria, about the issue of students’ permitted hours of work. What are the rules on that?”

Maria Gravelle: “Yes, so a student visa holder has a limited right to work and that limited right to work allows them to work 20 hours maximum per week during term time, and full time when they are outside of term time, so during their holiday period. This is not going to be the same across all students so in all cases it's important that an employer who is thinking about employing someone on a student visa conducts a right to work check confirming this. Some institutions, for example, don't have the necessary rating for their sponsored students to have that permission to work 20 hours a week so you might see some exceptional cases where that's not the norm but, generally, it's 20 hours per week during term time, full time permitted outside of term time.”

Joe Glavina: “What about right to work checks Maria, and how that ties in with term dates?”

Maria Gravelle: “So, if you're an employer and you are looking to engage, or employ, a student during the summer holidays - so let's say it's the middle of July, a student has applied for a job, let's say it’s starting in August or September - and your student comes to you and says, oh, I'm finished my course, I'm done. You do a right to work check what you will see on the right so work check is ‘student visa holder’ with the expiry date, 20 hours maximum per week, or full time outside of term. So, as an employer, you might look at that and think great, it's July, surely they are outside of term, but the Home Office guidance requires you, as an employer, to obtain evidence of that. Now, the guidance doesn't go into a great deal of detail as to what that evidence may entail. Generally, we recommend obtaining a letter from the university and you can ask the student to go and ask their course supervisor, or somebody, to provide that for them. Other useful information might be screenshots from the university’s profile for the student. Often this has the term dates written on there and you really want to ensure that the student, if they're starting a full-time role with you, is doing so on a date that is not considered, in writing, a term date by the university.”

Joe Glavina: “Shara, if I can come to you on students transitioning to other routes because there are strict rules around this, but the transition guidance isn’t clear. Talk me through that.”

Shara Pledger: “One thing that the Home Office has done in recent years is try to smooth this transition of moving out of study into other work routes and some of that has worked really well. We've seen the introduction of the graduate route, and that's obviously a fantastic tool for employers to be able to get to know some of their students, or even new hires, in a bit more detail before they make a decision about sponsorship. What has been less successful is the way that the Home Office has actually introduced this sort of transition from the student category into these other routes. There is very strict guidance, and a prohibition, basically, on students holding what we would class to be a permanent full-time role and in order to make it easier for organisations to recruit during this period they introduced a couple of caveats to that. So, effectively, where students were securing sponsorship, or where they were making applications under that graduate route, it opened up the door to them being taken on in a permanent full-time position. Unfortunately, guidance surrounding that is a real mess and it has sort of introduced potential requirements about when the students actually started their course which is often information that an employer doesn't actually know. So, really, it would just be great for employers to just be cautious in terms of what they're doing. If you are going to offer a full-time permanent contract to somebody who has status as a student, be really, really, confident that they can actually perform that role and, if you're not sure, then sticking with things like fixed term or temporary contracts can be a good way of protecting yourself against inadvertently breaching anybody's worker rights.”

Joe Glavina: “Is this an issue that affects the university sector in particular, or is it much wider than that?” 

Shara Pledger: “This issue affects everybody. There are a huge number of organisations that employ students in the UK and, obviously, it's completely sector agnostic as to how the graduate recruitment processes work. So, lots and lots of large organisations will be looking for graduate talent and that, obviously, will not necessarily always come from UK-born or British nationals. So, it's really important that everybody considers this as an option. What we've seen since Brexit is a kind of a closure of some of the routes that people are very used to recruiting their talent from, but that doesn't mean that the talent is not still there, it’s just that organisations need to understand the different ways that they can now access it. And that's all this. It’s just making sure that everybody understands what the opportunities are and that they don't suddenly find that they're in trouble because something that they thought existed previously is actually no longer available.”

Joe Glavina: “Finally, Maria, can I come to you on an issue you flagged in a piece you wrote for LinkedIn about arranging visa applications around summer holidays when students might be flying off somewhere. What’s the problem there?”

Maria Gravelle: “So, one of the big issues that we see around these types of applications, so students switching to graduate, or switching to skilled worker, either in advance or just after they've started a graduate programme, is that they have summer holidays booked and, naturally, if you're finishing a long university degree course, you have your final summer before you start work in September, you might have planned a wonderful trip during the summer holidays. Now, that can sometimes be quite disruptive to the visa application process because if you are applying for a UK visa from inside the UK you're not allowed to leave the Common Travel Area, as it's called, until you have received a decision on the application. Current processing times are around eight weeks unless priority services are taken. So, for many people's travel plans this can be quite disruptive. The message to employers is to have this conversation with their candidates early, once you've given an offer of employment to somebody who you know has a student visa, have the conversation with them, get an idea of when their current visa expires, whether or not they have any holiday plans, and then timetable when the application is submitted around both of those factors.”

That last point - managing visa applications in the summer holiday period - is covered in some detail by Maria in her LinkedIn article. We’ve put a link to that in the transcript of this programme for you.

LINKS
Link to LinkedIn article by Maria Gravelle