Spotlight on UK immigration compliance for US employers

If you’re a US business with operations in the UK, you might assume that hiring foreign workers and managing immigration compliance works in a similar way to the US system. But the UK has fundamentally different rules, and employers who don’t understand them can quickly find themselves in difficulty. We’ll speak to a UK immigration expert who will explain why.

In the US, immigration compliance is largely focused on I-9 forms and, in some cases, E-Verify. Once a company has verified an employee’s right to work, there’s often little further action required - unless the employee’s work authorization expires. Audits from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are reactive, often triggered by a complaint or investigation.

In contrast, the UK’s system is more proactive. Employers don’t just need to check work authorisation at the point of hire. They must also track visa expirations, conduct follow-up Right to Work checks, and meet strict sponsorship obligations if they’re employing workers on a visa. The UK government is actively cracking down on immigration non-compliance, with more employer audits, higher fines, and tougher enforcement. That’s why understanding the core compliance duties - from Right to Work checks to sponsor licence obligations - is essential for US employers operating in the UK.

One of the biggest differences between the US and UK systems is sponsorship. In the US, employers typically apply for work visas on a case-by-case basis, such as through the H-1B or L-1 visa process. In the UK, however, you can’t hire a skilled foreign worker unless your business has a sponsor licence. And it doesn’t stop there. A UK sponsor licence isn’t just a one-time approval - it comes with strict, ongoing compliance duties. 

For US employers, this is a major adjustment. In the US, once a visa is approved, there’s minimal reporting unless the worker leaves the company or changes roles significantly. In the UK, failing to keep immigration records up to date can lead to a sponsor licence suspension, which means you lose the ability to hire foreign workers altogether.

Another key difference is Right to Work checks. In the US, the I-9 process involves verifying documents and completing a form that is retained by the employer. Some businesses also use E-Verify, but that’s optional in many states. In the UK, Right to Work checks are a strict legal requirement, and employers must physically inspect original documents or use the Home Office online system, track visa expiration dates and conduct follow-up checks when required and ensure compliance across the entire workforce, not just visa holders. Failure to do this can lead to serious penalties, including fines of up to £60,000 per illegal worker for repeat offences, and in serious cases, criminal liability for business owners.

Understanding these key compliance duties is critical for any US business with a UK workforce because the systems are very different. So for example, in the US, an employer sponsors an individual foreign worker on a case-by-case basis whereas in the UK a company needs a licence before it can even think about hiring skilled migrant workers. So let’s hear more about that, and some of the other differences. Shara Pledger heads up our immigration team here in the UK and earlier she joined me by video-link from Manchester to discuss it: 

Shara Pledger: “The concept of licensing is relatively straightforward in the UK system, particularly when you compare it with the US. The underlying principle is that an organisation is going to need to take responsibility for the individuals that it sponsors. So it must prove its worth, if you like, to the Home Office in advance and secure this license, this ability to be able to host those migrant workers and what that does, to an extent, is take some of the lottery element that you might see in other jurisdictions like the US out of the UK process because once the license has already been secured and that's held by the organisation, under current rules, indefinitely unless an organisation loses it or decides to give it up. But once that licence is in place, then individual steps of going ahead and applying for a specific worker are quite straightforward, and there are very set parameters. So it means that you can be fairly confident that a place can be gained for a worker that's needed which, I understand, is very different to some of the jurisdictions.”

Joe Glavina: “In the US, once a visa is granted, the employer has relatively little reporting to do unless something major changes, like the employee leaving. But in the UK, as I understand it, there’s much more active reporting required.”

Shara Pledger: “Yes, that's right. In the UK, because we do have this licensing process that sort of underlies absolutely everything that's happening with our individual migrant workers, it does mean that the organisation that's sponsoring those workers is taking on that full responsibility for that individual for the full duration of their visa and so you have the obvious events which would trigger reporting, such as somebody leaving, or somebody's job fundamentally changing, but you'll also have additional check in points beyond that. So if somebody's salary has to temporarily change, if somebody takes a period of unpaid leave, if somebody changes work location, all of these things and more will be triggering the need to report and then alongside that, in the compliance sphere in the UK, you also have the record keeping requirements. So all of these things must be documented, and that can be a serious administrative burden for employers, particularly if they're sponsoring a high volume of workers.”

Joe Glavina: “One key difference from the US is that in the UK, if an employee has a time-limited visa, the employer has a duty to check their status again before it expires. That doesn’t happen in the US. Can you explain how those follow-up checks work?”

Shara Pledger: “Right to work is obviously a huge issue in the UK because there is that absolute requirement that somebody has the correct, not just type of status, but also the correct conditions of that status, that permit them to do the particular role and that means that employers have this quite onerous burden to make sure that all of their employees, whether they're sponsored workers or not, have the correct status to be able to work in the UK, and that is ongoing. If somebody has temporary permission to be in the UK, or if the conditions of their leave will change, then there will be this repeated requirement for an employer to continue to have to check that right to work which is not necessarily a very intrusive or onerous process, but it is obviously just another administrative step that goes into the process at, obviously, quite irregular intervals depending on what your workforce looks like, and the penalties of failing to do that are very severe. In the event that illegal working occurs, there are very obvious, usually civil, penalties, so financial penalties, that occur but in the case of an organisation with a sponsor license failing to have robust right to work checks can actually be an issue that could lead to enforcement action down the line anyway, regardless of whether illegal working occurs. So it is a very serious undertaking for all employers, whether they're sponsors or not.”

Joe Glavina: “In the US, enforcement action is typically triggered by a specific complaint or investigation but, as I understand it, in the UK Home Office audits can happen even when there’s no suspected violation. How do UK compliance audits work?”

Shara Pledger: “In the UK, compliance audits can be triggered by one of two things, either a very specific event, so the Home Office has become aware of illegal working or has received a report of some kind of activity of that nature, or alternatively it's just up for regular review. So ultimately, any organisation that holds a sponsor license is vulnerable to that type of investigation at any point and we see this all the time. We see clients that might have not been audited for 5, 6, 7, maybe even 10 years or so, suddenly receiving contact from the Home Office to say that they would like to come in for an audit and that doesn't have to be a big problem. There's no issue for the Home Office to come and audit an organisation so long as everything is up to date and all of the records are as they should be, but it does just mean that all organisations holding a licence do need to be on constant alert because you never know when an audit might be coming, and you might not be getting that much time to prepare.”

Joe Glavina: “One of the risks for US companies hiring in the UK is that sponsor licence compliance is assessed at multiple stages, not just at the time of hiring. What should businesses do to prepare for a Home Office audit?”

Shara Pledger: “It’s definitely good practice to be preparing and retaining your documentation as if they're going to be audited tomorrow. So one of the ways that we would assist clients to do that, for example, is that we will conduct regular check ins on their sponsor licence just to make sure that records are up to date with who is sponsored and what their details would be, but there are other things that organisations can do – regular auditing their right to work checks, for example, is another really good way of making sure that things are not going to come out of the closet and take them unawares in the event that the Home Office does suddenly turn up for an audit one day, but definitely preparation is key. If the Home Office do contact say that they're going to come for an audit, if notice is given, and it doesn't necessarily have to be, but if it's given, it's relatively short, so it's only about two weeks or so in the vast majority of cases. So it isn't a huge amount of time to really get documents up to scratch if things haven't been kept on top of.”

Joe Glavina: “In the US, industries like agriculture and hospitality tend to attract the most immigration scrutiny. In the UK, which sectors face the highest risk of enforcement action?”

Shara Pledger: “If we think about sponsor licensing first of all, there is one sector which has really been the focus of Home Office activity over the last sort of 18 to 24 months, and that has been adult social care. So people will have seen, I'm sure, stories in the media that look at sponsor licences that have been held by care homes, for example, and whether or not the way that the adult social care industry for work is being managed in a way that is compatible with sponsor licensing but it isn't obviously just that sector. Ultimately, any sector, is vulnerable to some kind of investigation when it comes to sponsor licensing but the Home Office will certainly, at certain points, notice that there will be spikes in recruitment, which is obviously what we saw when the health and care visa was introduced in the UK, and that can naturally lead to a higher volume of sponsors and then probably a greater number of mistakes that are being made by sponsors in that particular area. If we shift our focus to right to work, there's a bit more of a spread. So in right to work you will, if you ever take the time to sort of look down the list of the organisations that have unfortunately received penalties for having illegal workers, there will be a high volume of companies that are in hospitality, particularly things like restaurants and cafes and takeaways. You see a lot to do with personal beauty and grooming, and also car washes are quite high on the list as well. So there's definitely touch points that the Home Office is interested in when it comes to different areas of compliance.”

Joe Glavina: “What’s your final message for our US viewers?”

Shara Pledger: “Really, I think it's just to understand that it is a very different environment in the UK, and particularly in the UK, at the moment, it is an environment of vigilance when it comes to compliance. The Home Office has recently recruited quite a high volume of staff into its compliance teams and this is a real focus for them for 2025 and onwards, really. So ultimately, preparation is better than cure. Definitely take the time to make sure that the UK team understands the obligations and has got the measures in place and, if needs be, engage an organisation to assist you with that compliance or to audit and stress test your processes because it's far better to know in advance if there's a problem so you have the opportunity to fix it, than the Home Office come to find that when they actually conduct an audit.” 

If you are a US business with a presence in the UK and you’d like further information or help with UK immigration compliance please do get in touch with Shara. Here details are there on the screen for you.