How do I sponsor a migrant worker?
Tier 2 (Minister of religion)
This page explains the requirements you must meet to get a licence and sponsor migrants under the Tier 2 (Minister of religion) category of the points-based system.
If you want to apply for a sponsor licence in this category, your organisation must be a genuine (bona fide) religious organisation, which is:
- a registered, excepted or exempt UK charity according to the relevant charity legislation in force in your part of the UK; or
- an ecclesiastical corporation (either corporation sole or body corporate) established for charitable purposes.
In Northern Ireland you must have obtained charitable status for tax purposes from HM Revenue & Customs. If you are a charity which is not registered according to the relevant charity legislation you must explain the reason for non-registration in your application.
Your organisation must also be the structure for a faith-based community with a common system of belief and spiritual goals, codes of behaviour and religious practice, which exists to support and/or propagate those common beliefs and practices and where these beliefs:
- include any religious belief or similar philosophical belief in something transcendental, metaphysical or ultimate; and
- exclude any philosophical or political belief concerned with man, unless that belief is similar to religious belief.
Your organisation must also:
- not exclude from your community on the basis of gender, nationality or ethnicity;
- receive financial and material support for your core religious ministry from your congregation or community on a voluntary basis only, without promise or coercion;
- not breach, or encourage others to breach any UK legislation; and
- not operate against the public interest, or in a way that has a detrimental effect on personal or family life as these are commonly understood in the UK.
A religious order is defined for our purposes as a lineage of communities or of people who live in some way set apart from society in accordance with their specific religious devotion, and which must be part of a genuine religious organisation, as defined above.