Cancellation or curtailment of immigration permission is explained in Home Office guidance where Home Office sets out circumstances when they can make decisions to end a visa holder’s immigration permission. To put it in a more formal way, the Home Office guidance tells caseworkers whether to cancel an individual’s permission to enter or stay in the UK or curtail leave where this applies and when to consider using discretion. It is based on the Immigration Rules.
Recently Home Office made some positive changes for care workers 6135 and senior care workers 6136, which mean that they immigration permission will not be cancelled if the sole reason is revocation of the sponsor employer’s licence.
No visa cancellation for care workers 6135 and 6136 following sponsor licence revocation
The new Home Office guidance now states that Home Office caseworker must NOT cancel a person’s permission where the person holds permission on the Skilled Worker [or Health and Care Worker] route as a care worker (Standard Occupation Classification (SOC) 6135 or 6145) or senior care worker (SOC 6136 or 6146), and the sole reason for cancellation would be the revocation of the sponsor’s licence.
The above arrangement for care workers is temporary and subject to regular review.
Where any other reason for cancellation applies, caseworkers must consider cancellation in the usual way.
Conclusions
The changes to visa cancellation rules for care workers soc code 6135 (previous 6145) and senior care workers 6136 (previous 6146) are positive for sponsored migrants working in adult social care. The amendment to the cancellation guidance gives those migrant workers more time to find a new sponsor which may take sometime. Before the above change, care workers and senior care workers immigration permission was shortened to 60 days and this was for many of those workers not enough time to find a new sponsor.
It is important to note that the above arrangement for care workers is temporary and subject to regular review so it is important to keep checking the law as it may get changed.