Spotlight on UK immigration enforcement for US employers

If you’re a US business with operations in the UK, it’s not enough to simply understand your immigration compliance obligations, you also need to know what happens when things go wrong. The UK takes a proactive approach to immigration enforcement, and that means employers who fall short of their duties can face significant consequences such as - unannounced inspections by the Home Office, suspension or revocation of sponsor licences, civil penalties, and in serious cases, even criminal sanctions. We’ll speak to an immigration expert to understand what US employers need to know.

This is very different from what most US employers are used to. In the US, enforcement tends to be reactive, with workplace audits from Immigration and Customs Enforcement often triggered by tips or complaints. But in the UK, enforcement is built into the system. If you hold a sponsor licence, you can expect to be audited, sometimes before you’ve even hired a single worker. 

One of the biggest risks for employers here in the UK is a Home Office compliance inspection. These can be pre-arranged or entirely unannounced, and they involve detailed checks on your immigration records, recruitment processes, and day-to-day compliance with sponsorship duties. For US employers used to a more paperwork-based approach, this can come as a shock. In the UK, enforcement officers can visit your premises, interview your staff, and inspect your files, even before you've sponsored anyone. If they find that you’ve breached your duties, even accidentally, they can issue a warning, suspend your licence, or revoke it altogether. 

Licence suspension is especially serious. While suspended, you can’t issue new Certificates of Sponsorship, which means you can’t hire new visa workers, and in some cases you may even need to terminate existing workers’ sponsorship. In practice, that can bring recruitment plans to a standstill.

Then there’s the question of fines and liability. If you employ someone without the legal right to work, you can be fined up to £60,000 per worker for repeat breaches. And if the breach is deliberate, employers. including directors, can face criminal prosecution.

These risks aren’t limited to bad actors. Many penalties are issued because employers didn’t realise they were non-compliant, particularly around right to work checks, visa expirations, or record-keeping gaps. That’s why UK enforcement focuses not just on deliberate wrongdoing, but also on whether employers have the right systems in place to stay compliant.

So let’s get a view on this. Earlier, I spoke to immigration expert Shara Pledger, who joined me by video-link from Manchester. So, given that in the US workplace enforcement often involves surprise visits from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, do we see similar enforcement action here in the UK?:

Shara Pledger: “To an extent, yes. So, the UK Home Office and its various compliance teams within UK Visas and Immigration and other bodies, they will have quite wide-ranging powers to be able to enter premises, for example, particularly when they're in possession of information that illegal working might be taking place. Now, where illegal working occurs, it's more likely that there would be some kind of unannounced visit that might take place, but that isn't always the case. Ultimately, whichever government body it happens to be, or whatever team it happens to be, is hoping to encounter somebody in the workplace who's actively breaking the law, they may well try and engage with the employer in order to make sure that person is on shift, for example, rather than turning up unannounced and then not getting the individual that they were hoping to encounter. So it's very much the case that you will still get unannounced visits but I would say that they are much less common than they previously used to be and it is now much more likely that you will see this opportunity for active cooperation with the Home Office as they're making their investigations, and that can be a really useful tool for an employer as well because if illegal working, unfortunately, has occurred one of the ways that it's possible to try and mitigate the amount of penalty that might be paid is to actively cooperate with an investigation.”

Joe Glavina: “In the US, if a company is found to be non-compliant they may face fines or additional oversight but their ability to hire foreign workers isn’t usually revoked immediately. In the UK though, losing a sponsor licence can be devastating. What happens if a business has its sponsor licence suspended?”

Shara Pledger: “Sponsor licence suspensions will usually come about in the event that the Home Office has investigated an organisation and has found that their processes are somehow deficient, which might be lapses in record keeping reporting or illegal working, for example. The initial stage of that is to suspend, which is usually a temporary process, which allows for a bit more investigation, it allows for submissions on behalf of the organisation as well to try and either justify what's happened, or to try and mitigate what's happened and argue for a lesser penalty. But, ultimately, if the revocation is then going to go ahead it will be absolute. There's no right of appeal to revocation of a sponsor licence, for example, so it does mean that if that wants to be challenged by the organisation, there are very limited opportunities to do that. You would have to go to the High Court in the UK and argue for judicial review – it’s a very, very difficult thing to do. So I would say that if an organisation believes that they are likely to have their licence suspended, or has had their licence suspended, they will be first of all frozen out from recruiting new people for the period of the suspension – so they should obviously make immediate plans in relation to any imminent recruitment that was due to take place – but the best advice, really, is to make the most of that time. It can be very tempting to try and sort of fire back immediately with submissions about what's gone wrong, or why the licence should not ultimately be revoked, but taking the time to be very thorough in those submissions, and particularly to provide evidence in support of any submissions that the organisation wants to make is really important, and that just kind of comes back to what I said about not having a right of appeal, because if the Home Office doesn't accept those submissions and decides to go ahead to revoke the only means of redress will be going to the High Court and arguing in front of a judge that things have been fundamentally unfair or unreasonable, and if you don't have the evidence already before the Home Office to demonstrate why you were making reasonable points, you're really on a loser.”

Joe Glavina: “In the US, fines for hiring unauthorised workers can reach around $10,000 per worker, but in the UK, as I understand it, the penalties can be very much higher than that. Is that right?”

Shara Pledger: “Yes, absolutely correct. So in February of 2024 there was a significant increase to the maximum penalty that could be imposed for employing an illegal worker. So we jumped from a maximum penalty of £20,000 up to a maximum penalty of £60,000. Now that isn't what's going to be enforced in every case, there is an immediate reduction if you haven't received a similar penalty in the preceding few years. There might also be other mitigations that reduce it further still but, ultimately, if you are found to be an employer of an illegal worker you are looking at thousands of pounds in penalties. I have to say, though, the UK isn't actually the most stringent jurisdiction when it comes to this. If you compare even to quite near neighbours, such as Germany for example, it could be more expensive still. But it's pretty significant in the UK, however, and obviously, if you have multiple workers it does add up very, very quickly.”

Joe Glavina: “In the US, immigration penalties typically involve financial penalties rather than personal liability but in the UK, as I understand it, executives can face more serious consequences beyond fines”

Shara Pledger: “Yes, it's absolutely right that individuals can also face those kinds of penalties. Primarily, of course, we're looking at civil penalty system and in that instance it's the employer that's liable and the employer will, of course, be a corporate entity in the vast majority of cases, so it would be a fine issued to the company. However, if it can be proven that there was an individual who was actually aware that the illegal working was taking place, or that the individual would not have the correct permission to be engaged into the work, then personal liability can kick in and that can, of course, extend to fines but also actually up to a custodial sentence. So you can be sent to prison for deliberately allowing illegal working to take place.”

Joe Glavina: “UK immigration rules require much more active compliance than many US employers expect so is the key message to treat immigration compliance as a continuous process, not just a hiring requirement?”

Shara Pledger: “Yes, that's absolutely right. What employers should be doing is making sure not just that their house is in order at the time that they want to apply for a licence, or they want to hire a particular individual, but be working on the basis that they could be audited on these records tomorrow and so they just always need to be constantly updated and constantly in compliance with the Home Office requirements and, unfortunately, there's no getting away from the fact that those requirements are pretty onerous. There is a huge volume of sponsor guidance that exists, for example, that covers areas such as record keeping and reporting and other duties that will need to be complied with as a licenced sponsor but all of this is constantly ongoing. Those duties are applicable, arguably, even before a licence is in place because you can be refused a licence if you haven't complied with some of those duties in your past and those requirements, of course, will continue throughout the entire lifetime of a licence during which time, of course, we'll see sponsored workers come and go so it is a significant undertaking for an organisation to take on. The Home Office guidance, you will always see repeated the reference to the fact that sponsorship and licensing is a privilege and it's not a right, and it is upon an organisation to prove that they are constantly deserving of that privilege. So there's just no way of getting around the fact that if you are deficient in complying with your duties you will absolutely pay the price.”

Joe Glavina: “Finally Shara, we know the Home Office has been ramping up its enforcement activity in recent months and we’ve seen a rise in unannounced visits. That’s a big deal. What’s your message to our viewers on that?”

Shara Pledger: “In the event that an enforcement visit happens unexpected, then it could be very, very disconcerting for an organisation, particularly an organisation that's a sponsor in addition to one that just happens to employ individuals that could well be illegal workers. It's really important not to panic. So always be open, always cooperate with the investigation, if you're asked for documentation provide it, if you can't provide it immediately the time try and make arrangements for when it can be provided in a reasonable time frame in the future. But ultimately, just take notes of everything and try and make sure that you can identify what might we need to cover off to see any issues on the horizon and try and deal with them. It might be that you have a representative that you work with that can assist you with that. It can be very disconcerting but it doesn't have to be absolutely fatal to a licence. Even in the event that an issue is identified, there are steps that organisations can take to work through that, to have action plans to make sure that their future conduct is more compliant, for example. So really it's just about taking that time, taking the space, to work out, okay, what position are we in and what do we need to do to move this forward and retain our licence?”

Back in April Shara talked to this programme about manging immigration compliance in the UK which, like immigration enforcement, is very different to the US. That’s ‘Spotlight on UK immigration compliance for US employers’ and is available now for viewing from the Out-Law website. Meanwhile, if you are a US business with a presence in the UK and you’d like further information or help with UK immigration please do get in touch with Shara. Her details are there on the screen for you.

- Link to HRNews programme: ‘Spotlight on UK immigration compliance for US employers’