Are UK companies allowed to offer visa sponsorships if there isn’t a skill shortage?

[funkyContractorITUK]

I don't mean this to be a political post, I’m just trying to understand the logic. How is it that companies are allowed to offer visa sponsorships for jobs where skills are not in short supply and plenty of good talent available? What is the process for them to prove that there is a skill shortage

For example, I’ve seen a role posted on a well-known job site, it mentions all the “benefits” the company offer but no sign of a salary. It was a senior frontend developer role, with a stack I usually work with but the job specs look like your typical developer job, AWS, 7+ years experience etc etc. There are plenty good talented people on the market desperate for work, I know would be able to fill this role as a contractor but also am aware of others who are out of work and looking for permanent roles who could do it.



If the company is not prepared to advertise the salary or is not willing to pay for the market rate for skills then why should they be allowed to look abroad and offer places for people to move to the UK to work for lower salaries?

I understand we do have skill shortages in the medical fields and would see the point of visa sponsorships for those jobs.

[northernladuk]

I don't mean this to be a political post, I’m just trying to understand the logic. How is it that companies are allowed to offer visa sponsorships for jobs where skills are not in short supply and plenty of good talent available? What is the process for them to prove that there is a skill shortage

For example, I’ve seen a role posted on a well-known job site, it mentions all the “benefits” the company offer but no sign of a salary. It was a senior frontend developer role, with a stack I usually work with but the job specs look like your typical developer job, AWS, 7+ years experience etc etc. There are plenty good talented people on the market desperate for work, I know would be able to fill this role as a contractor but also am aware of others who are out of work and looking for permanent roles who could do it.

There is and I'd be surprised if many clients are going offshore for roles they can fill. I know people say clients go for the cheapest but I'm not convinced. When they've got a budgeted role to fill which is project dependant they will usually pay what they offer. I don't think they'll fill it with other people out of work. We've always said new contractors are a risk so just pay what they are willing to pay and get the best talent in.

That said I've seen a ton of 500 quid inside gigs in London, christ knows who is taking those but people do.

If the company is not prepared to advertise the salary or is not willing to pay for the market rate for skills then why should they be allowed to look abroad and offer places for people to move to the UK to work for lower salaries?

I understand we do have skill shortages in the medical fields and would see the point of visa sponsorships for those jobs.

You say salary. Are you talking about perm here or contracting only and a slip of the tongue. It's not uncommon for agents not to advertise rates as they will try screw the unwary contractor. They will have a rate from the client and then just play the contractor.

If you are talking perm then no idea.

[dsc]

I'd say it depends how you define "skill shortage", cause I'm sure for some companies not being able to find someone with a skillset of an experienced specialist on a junior salary is 100% skill shortage. Very often it's not that there's no people to do the job, it's that people don't want to do the job that pays below all the effort / skill it requires.

[sreed]

I don't mean this to be a political post, I’m just trying to understand the logic. How is it that companies are allowed to offer visa sponsorships for jobs where skills are not in short supply and plenty of good talent available? What is the process for them to prove that there is a skill shortage

For example, I’ve seen a role posted on a well-known job site, it mentions all the “benefits” the company offer but no sign of a salary. It was a senior frontend developer role, with a stack I usually work with but the job specs look like your typical developer job, AWS, 7+ years experience etc etc. There are plenty good talented people on the market desperate for work, I know would be able to fill this role as a contractor but also am aware of others who are out of work and looking for permanent roles who could do it.

If the company is not prepared to advertise the salary or is not willing to pay for the market rate for skills then why should they be allowed to look abroad and offer places for people to move to the UK to work for lower salaries?

I understand we do have skill shortages in the medical fields and would see the point of visa sponsorships for those jobs.

The short answer is - yes they are. People might not realise the extent of it, but the ‘reformed’ visa system post Brexit is incredibly flexible, designed to make it easy for companies to hire from overseas and (as you would expect) open to abuse.

It’s not just about bringing new people from overseas, it’s also about being able to offer visas to people that are already here - student visas, graduate visas, whm visas, dependents, etc.

The “shortage list” eligible for a skilled worker visa is a nonsense and overly broad. Here are some of the jobs listed on there -

- Manager (Charitable organisation)
- HR Business Partner
- Car Sales Manager
- Retail Manager (!)
- Shop Manager (charitable org)
- Shop Manager (take-away food shop)
- Manager (nail salon)
- Car park manager
- University Teaching Assistant
- Paralegal
- Digital Marketing Analyst
- Scrum Master
- Librarian

Is there a shortage of HR Business Partners? Why would a nail salon ‘Manager’ or a takeaway shop ‘Manager’ need a visa? Look at the number of applications on a Scrum Master job ad on LinkedIn. Paralegals, university TAs, Librarians - you would get tons of applications for these posts in most parts of the country.

You don’t need a huge amount of imagination to think about all the ways in which these routes are misused.

’Misused’ is contextual as I think the system is working exactly as intended. The Tories’ intentions were to make it as easy as possible for businesses to hire immigrants on the cheap, keep salaries low, encourage mass immigration to keep the GDP (but not GDP/capita) up with a rising population.

[malvolio]

snip...

’Misused’ is contextual as I think the system is working exactly as intended. The Tories’ intentions were to make it as easy as possible for businesses to hire immigrants on the cheap, keep salaries low, encourage mass immigration to keep the GDP (but not GDP/capita) up with a rising population.

I know it's fashionable to blame the Tories for everything, but the current chaos of the visa system predates them by several years, back to Blair/Brown's gaming the system to encourage diversity in the country. The Tories are cocking it up big time, but they simply don't have the tools they need as a result.

[funkyContractorITUK]

You say salary. Are you talking about perm here or contracting only and a slip of the tongue. It's not uncommon for agents not to advertise rates as they will try screw the unwary contractor. They will have a rate from the client and then just play the contractor.

If you are talking perm then no idea.

This particular role is perm

[funkyContractorITUK]

The “shortage list” eligible for a skilled worker visa is a nonsense and overly broad. Here are some of the jobs listed on there -

- Manager (Charitable organisation)
- HR Business Partner
- Car Sales Manager
- Retail Manager (!)
- Shop Manager (charitable org)
- Shop Manager (take-away food shop)
- Manager (nail salon)
- Car park manager
- University Teaching Assistant
- Paralegal
- Digital Marketing Analyst
- Scrum Master
- Librarian

No software developer/engineer roles lists in there. 🤦♂️

[Paracelsus]

No software developer/engineer roles lists in there. 🤦♂️

The list is much bigger, he's just picked a handful of obviously non-shortage roles to show what a grift it is.

What makes the situation worse is the salaries required for skilled worker visas, up until very recently the 'lower rate' listed here - https://www.gov.uk/government/public...cupation-codes

Example - Programmers and software development professionals - £36,300.

It's now a more respectable ~£50k under new rules so less of a wage suppression effect, but it was too low for far too long.

[sreed]

I know it's fashionable to blame the Tories for everything, but the current chaos of the visa system predates them by several years, back to Blair/Brown's gaming the system to encourage diversity in the country. The Tories are cocking it up big time, but they simply don't have the tools they need as a result.

I’m sorry, that’s just BS. After promising “tens of thousands” for years and low immigration post-Brexit, the vast majority of record numbers of millions of permanent non-EU immigrants (unlike EU immigrants, there ain’t a chance in hell of them going back) we’ve imported post Brexit has been on visas issued by the Home Office. The visa system was intentionally liberalised by the Tories post Brexit hiding behind the smoke and mirrors of promises made on immigration that they never intended to keep.

The Tories have been in power for 14 years, with the last many years with a huge majority in parliament (even though work visa policy does not need legislation).

If they wanted to limit immigration to only a handful of actually high skilled jobs (as opposed to nail salon managers and takeaway shops) that are experiencing a shortage of suitable candidates, they’d have done it by now.

The Tories have been rubbing our noses in supercharged volumes of diversity for the past 5+ years, while constantly promising to do the opposite for more than a decade now.

[sreed]

The list is much bigger, he's just picked a handful of obviously non-shortage roles to show what a grift it is.

What makes the situation worse is the salaries required for skilled worker visas, up until very recently the 'lower rate' listed here - https://www.gov.uk/government/public...cupation-codes

Example - Programmers and software development professionals - £36,300.

It's now a more respectable ~£50k under new rules so less of a wage suppression effect, but it was too low for far too long.

Definitely a step in the right direction but if you look at the long list of different IT professions, you can see the scope that exists to categorise a role so it lands in a convenient salary range.