Tier 3 Visa for Unskilled Migration

The following information is about the UK's new points based system, which has not been fully implemented yet. It's possible that information may change over the course of the following months, so please check back periodically.

Tier 3 Visa Overview

Under the new points based system, employment-based immigration will be broken into five tiers. Tier 3 encompasses unskilled, temporary migration for employment that is largely seasonal in nature.

Tier 3 was designed to replace schemes such as the current Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme (SAWS) and the Sectors Based Scheme (SBS). However, the UK government recently stated that Tier 3 would be suspended from implementation for an indefinite period of time.

The United Kingdom feels that it can source employees from within the European Union to meet the labor demands of employers that hire unskilled, seasonal labor. The government has recently started earmarking programs such as SAWS and SBS for nationals of Bulgaria and Romania, who have had temporary labor restrictions placed on both of their nations upon their accession to the European Union in 2007.

The changes to SAWS and the SBS have drawn criticism from key stakeholders such as the agricultural industry. Employers feel that they cannot meet labor demands with only EU migrant workers. If this is true, expect to see Tier 3 to become a reality in the future.