What happens at a Tier 2 audit:
right to work checks and
migrant interviews

2 August 2019

If your organisation is one of the 30,000 in the UK currently registered as a Tier 2 sponsor of migrant workers, you will be aware of the importance of compliance with the immigration rules.

We have already examined what happens when you have an audit from the Home Office and how to behave to show you are serious about compliance. This article looks at your other responsibilities as a Tier 2 sponsor licence holder when a member of the Home Office enforcement team visits.

Migrant checks

The Home Office is likely to want to carry out specific checks, depending on how heavy a user of the sponsor licence your business is. For instance, the enforcement team will ask to see at least 10 per cent of your migrant files, if you have a large foreign workforce.

If you have more than 300 migrants studying at your institution, the auditor will want to check a minimum of 17 per cent of their files. A company that has only two migrant workers should expect both of them to be checked and interviewed.

Right to work checks

Once again, the amount of checks made will depend on how large your migrant workforce is, but broadly speaking, the enforcement team will look at a minimum of 10 per cent of all migrants’ right to work checks. In practice, it is more likely to be as many as a quarter of all documents.

Migrant interviews

Please make your migrant workforce aware that that an immigration auditor will wish to interview them. You may not be able to give your staff members any prior warning of when the visit will occur, but you should not let this worry you or them.

As a rule, if you sponsor fewer than three migrant workers, the enforcement team will ask to interview them all. They will ask to speak to a minimum of three foreign staff if your organisation is bigger.

Further reading

What happens at a Tier 2 compliance visit?

How to behave at a Tier 2 compliance audit

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