Graduate visa at risk with ‘rushed’ MAC review

Is the Graduate visa at risk? In March the government commissioned the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) to review the Graduate visa and we await its report which is due on 14 May amid concerns that the route is being exploited and abused. We’ll speak to an immigration expert about the future of this important route.  

A reminder. The Graduate visa is the route permitting overseas Graduates of UK universities to get a 2-year unsponsored visa allowing them to work in any role in the UK, 3 years for PhD students. Many employers take on staff on Graduate visas with a view to enabling them to acquire the skills and experience needed for more senior or higher paid roles, so any changes could have a significant impact on their recruitment strategy. 

This goes back to December last year and the announcement by the Home Secretary James Cleverley that the government were keen to ensure the visa “works in the best interests of the UK and to ensure steps are being taken to prevent abuse.” At the time he said the MAC would be commissioned in January but the subsequent two-month delay means the Committee has very little time to meet the Home Secretary’s 14 May deadline. On 11 March the government asked the MAC to conduct a ‘rapid review’, meaning there will be no call for evidence, little scope for external evidence gathering, and a limited ability to conduct stakeholder engagement.  

So, let’s get a view on this. Shara Pledger is an immigration specialist and earlier she joined me by video-link to discuss the Graduate visa and whether it is at risk:   

Shara Pledger: “I think all eyes are on Graduate at the moment and it's definitely something that we speak about with clients on a probably daily basis to be honest. Yes, I think definitely the Graduate route is at risk. We have seen quite a lot of rhetoric over the last couple of weeks in relation to not just Graduates but also international students. They're clearly an area where there is feeling within the Home Office and government at the moment that there is abuse of that system. Now, I find that quite difficult to understand as a viewpoint when it comes to the Graduate route. The Graduate route is specifically designed to allow people who have met pretty challenging criteria, you know, they've come to the UK, they've completed difficult courses with reputable organisations, and it gives those people an opportunity to gain work experience in the UK. Now, to categorise their work experience as somehow being abuse of the process because it's not in a role that is as highly skilled as they may well move on to in their later career just doesn't seem right to me, somehow. The Graduate route is there to give people this opportunity to allow them the possibility of gaining that endgame job, if you like. So, I think that what we're definitely seeing is a move towards framing this route in a negative light, probably with a view of getting rid of it in future and, of course, that's not an approach that we would be unfamiliar with. We previously had the Post-study work route in a previous iteration of the immigration rules and that was removed for exactly the same reasons. It was felt that it was abused because people were taking that kind of route in the UK and ending up working in roles that are considered to be less highly skilled or less highly paid, so we would simply just be repeating a pattern of the past. Whether that happens, depending on what happens politically in the UK over 2024, perhaps into 2025, is going to be really interesting. The current government seems fairly committed to either overhauling, if not removing, Graduate route altogether. If we ended up with a Labour government, for example, it is less clear whether that would be the approach that they will take as Labour have tended to speak far more favourably of the Graduate route, not just as an opportunity for those individuals but also it's importance to the higher education sector as a whole. So MAC is due to report back in, I think it's May, mid to end of May they have been requested, and we'll see whether they're able to meet that very tight deadline that they've been set and then, of course, if changes are made, it would be later in the year.”

Joe Glavina: “As we know Shara, a lot of clients rely on the Graduate route so what will it mean for them if it were to change radically, or disappear altogether?”

Shara Pledger: “At the moment, a lot of our clients will use the Graduate reach as an opportunity to almost get to know those workers a little bit better before they make a decision about whether or not they would like to extend sponsorship and that might just be an approach that has to change if Graduate is removed as an immigration possibility. So, of course, it is still possible to sponsor a student straight from completing their course, moving into the world of work, we have no reason to think that that would change and there are benefits to doing this. These individuals can also qualify for the new entrance salary rate for those discounts to the amount that people need to be paid can also work out cheaper for a sponsor to actually offer that sponsorship to a student directly upon graduation without them moving into that Graduate route as a bit of a bridge before they start their skilled worker journey. So, there are definitely ways that employers could look to adapting their approach to these individuals. The question is whether it would work for them in practice, however. Graduate recruitment tends to be an area where there's quite a lot of forward planning so people that are interviewing for Graduate roles today, throughout the course of this year, quite often won't be starting those roles until 2025, maybe even into 2026. So, it will have a huge impact for that type of recruitment, that kind of forward planning for recruitment, because it simply won't be an option if people want to be sponsored, they will have to get that job that’s starting very quickly after their course is completing. The alternative is that they leave the UK and have to then apply to return.”

Joe Glavina: “The MAC isn’t due to report back until 14 May so in the meantime what’s the advice to clients faced with this uncertainty over the Graduate visa?”

Shara Pledger: “One of the things that we're being asked a lot about the Graduate route, and this kind of couples with the changes that are coming to the immigration rules on the fourth of April in relation to salary, is must I be offering sponsorship to my Graduates now if I can see that they possibly aren't going to be meeting salary levels that will apply if I sponsor them later than the fourth of April? It's a really interesting question because, obviously, there's a business reason to sponsor sooner if the individual person will be needed by that business - it would obviously make sense to get them within ‘skilled worker’ where they can meet all of the criteria, rather than waiting for a later date arbitrarily to find that actually now they no longer qualify. So, I suppose there are kind of two key messages. Number one, there's no requirement to wait until somebody is completing their Graduate visa to sponsor them. Graduates can move out of that route into ‘skilled worker’ at any point throughout the process, even if they only hold their Graduate visa for a couple of days, that’s absolutely fine. Number two, however, there is no obligation on a sponsor to say, well, actually, I will now have to offer sponsorship to all of the people that I employ on a Graduate basis. If somebody still has the right to work, you're absolutely able to still continue employing them and if no decision has been made about sponsorship because that's just not how the business operates or because, ultimately, it's just not something that can be looked at the current time, perhaps the allocation for sponsorship isn't currently there, that's fine. There is no legal obligation on a sponsor to go ahead and accelerate plans in relation to sponsorship just because the rules are changing. Just bear in mind that when those rules do change it might mean that person no longer qualifies in future.”

Shara mentioned changes coming into force on 4 April. There’s a whole raft of important immigration rules changes happening on that day and Shara talked to this programme about them in: ‘Changes to UK’s work visa routes from 4 April 2024’. We’ve put a link to that programme in the transcript of this programme for you.

LINKS
- Link to HRNews programme: ‘Changes to UK’s work visa routes from 4 April 2024’