UK graduate visa route confusing for employers

The Home Office has been urged to do more to promote the UK graduate visa scheme after a recent APPG for International Students revealed that employers ‘don’t understand’ the immigration route. 

Speakers at the APPG event, held in London, agreed that the graduate visa route is an attractive proposition for international students, but had concerns over costs and employer awareness of the scheme.

Simran Harichand, a graduate working for a digital marketing agency, Hallam, told The Pie News that the cost of the UK graduate visa is ‘very prohibitive’. Harichand said: “For international students who already pay higher tuition fees, and can only work 20 hours a week during term time, the expectation for them to have £2,000 to spare the minute they graduate is a bit high.”

No job guarantees

Meanwhile, the chief executive of UKCISA, Anne Marie Graham, highlighted that there is no guarantee of getting a job after obtaining the graduate visa.

Harichand claimed that UK employers ‘don’t completely understand’ the visa route, saying that employers see those on the visas as ‘students who expire in two years’.

Teresa Corcoran, a member of the AGCAS Internationalisation Task Group and postgraduate careers consultant at Nottingham University Business School, said: “Many employers are reluctant to accept the graduate visa as a valid right to work.”

“I think a lot of the employers are fearful of taking international graduates on because they are scared of breaching the regulations.”

Siqi Jia, a University of Glasgow graduate said that a better job must be done of highlighting the differences between a UK skilled worker visa, which can cost upwards of £4,000 in total, and the more flexible, cost-effective graduate route.

Jia is currently on a UK skilled worker visa and is sponsored by her employer. She said: “Once I enter the UK job market, I need to stick with my employer. And even if I don’t like that job or find it’s too difficult, I would not be able to switch my visa to graduate route, which is quite scary.”

Graduate visa flexibility

However, the graduate visa route offers international students greater flexibility when entering the job market. The route does not require holders to meet certain salary thresholds, allows for self-employment, has no sector restrictions and students can switch between employers.

A graduate visa is also more cost-effective. For workers on a graduate visa, employers would be subject to an annual payment of £1,000 per graduate if they wanted to sponsor them on a skilled worker visa once the graduate visa expires after two years.

However, if employers switched them from the graduate visa straight to a skilled worker visa, they would not be subject to the £1,000 cost.

Corcoran said: “It really would cause a barrier for any graduates trying to get from the graduate visa into permanent employment.”

Several industry sectors have lobbied the Home Office ‘quite strongly’ over the cost of hiring international workers.

Greater exposure

Stakeholders have said that greater exposure to the graduate visa route would contribute to the success of the scheme.

Anne Marie Graham said: “Institutions are doing great work to promote the route but at a government level, more needs to be done to promote it to employers. “Employers are looking for guidance and reassurance about the route from government itself.”

According to Corcoran, promotion from UK Visas and Immigration – a department within the Home Office – to employers would be welcomed.

Charley Robinson, head of global mobility at UUKi, said: “I think what you’ve got with employers is a tension between the desire to employ international graduates, but then the perceived compliance risks around it.”

“We could really use more support from government in communicating both benefits and guidelines around the graduate route and skilled worker routes to employers to make sure that that’s clearer,” Robinson added.

Graduate visa extensions

Official Home Office data for 21 July to 31 December 2021 shows that 28,700 graduate visa extensions were granted. New data is expected to be published on 26 May.

Graham argued that better promotion of the visa will have a positive impact on recruitment, saying: “If students start to talk about how they don’t get jobs on the graduate visa because employees aren’t employing them, that will get back very quickly to recruitment markets.”

“It’s in the government’s interest to be promoting this visa as part of this portfolio and really helping employers understand it,” Graham added.

Meanwhile, Bobby Mehta, BUILA chair and associate pro vice-chancellor (Global Engagement) at the University of Portsmouth said the UK faces several big challenges by failing to promote the graduate visa route.

Mehta said: “You only have to look at what competitor countries are doing. You’ve got Australia moving from two to three years, you’ve got New Zealand looking at reforms… making it easier to move from one visa to another. The UAE is offering graduates golden visas of 10 years, and Canada is looking to make their space more competitive.”

“We can’t sit back and relax,” Mehta added.

New target

The graduate visa has already helped the government reach its target of enrolling 600,000 international students, 10 years ahead of schedule. Now, stakeholders think a fresh target would outline the UK’s intentions and send a clear message to international students.

Earlier this year, Lord Bilimoria proposed a target of 1,000,000 international students by 2030, claiming this was a viable aim.

Mehta said: “The competitive advantage is being eroded away. Whilst we are reviewing what’s been successful here, other countries are looking at what the UK has done and moving ahead.”

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