How do I sponsor a migrant worker?
Tier 5 - religious worker
This page explains the requirements you must meet to get a licence and sponsor migrants to religious roles under the tier 5 - religious worker category of the points-based system.
To get a licence under this category, your organisation must be a genuine (bona fide) religious institution. It must be a registered, excepted or exempt United Kingdom charity according to the relevant charity legislation in force in its part of the United Kingdom, or an ecclesiastical corporation (either corporation sole or body corporate) established for charitable purposes. In Northern Ireland, it must have obtained charitable status for tax purposes from HM Revenue & Customs. Charities that are not registered according to the relevant charity legislation must explain the reason for non-registration when they apply.
Your organisation must 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, where such 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.
Additionally, your organisation must:
- not exclude from its community on the basis of gender, nationality or ethnicity;
- receive financial and material support for its core religious ministry from its congregation or community on a voluntary basis only, without promise or coercion;
- not breach, or encourage others to breach, any United Kingdom 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 United Kingdom.