The Religious Worker Visa Route (Tier 2 Minister of Religion)
The UK immigration rule acknowledges that occasionally faith-based organisations may consider employing the services of skilled religious workers from outside the European Economic Area (EEA) to fill vacant roles in their respective organisations in the UK. There are two main avenues, which can be used to facilitate the services of foreign skilled religious workers, which are Tier 2 Minister of Religion (MoR) and Tier 5 (Temporary Worker) (TW) Religious Worker visa routes.
Although faith-based organisations may make use of any of these routes to recruit foreign nationals to fill roles in the UK, it is important to consider the possible best route among these two routes in view of the eventual commercial benefit the organisation may gain in the long term. As recruitment generally is an expensive venture, targeting foreign skilled religious workers becomes even more challenging due to the number of rules and regulations that organisations must comply.
Prior to the changes in the UK Immigration Rules in January 2019, when it was announced that faith-based organisations could no longer recruit skilled religious workers in the Tier 5 (TW) Religious Workers to fill vacant role of a Minister of Religion, faith-based organisations have always used these two routes in recruiting skilled religious workers to the UK. Whilst the Tier 2 (MoR) visas routes are for long-term roles, the Tier 5 (TW) Religious Workers routes are for shorter term roles. In effect, the commercial benefits a faith-based organisation may derive from using the Tier 2 (MoR) route outweighs its initial investments in the long term as this route can eventually lead to British citizenship if all the necessary requirements are met.
The Tier 2 (MoR) visa route is for faith-based skilled workers that have been offered a faith related job in a faith-based organisations or community such as a minister of religion or missionary. In order for a UK faith-based organisation to employ the services of a skilled religious worker, the organisation must hold a Tier 2 (MoR) Sponsor Licence in order to assist the potential skilled religious worker with what is called a Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS). The CoS will require that certain information is allocated to the skilled religious worker and will further require key information such as work dates, salary, employment hours, job description, work location etc about the vacant role in the UK. The potential skilled religious worker can then use the CoS number to make their entry clearance application to come to the UK.
If the application is successful, the potential faith-based skilled worker can come to the UK for a maximum of six years, which if they meet all the necessary requirements, can remain indefinitely after six years. One major commercial aims of most skilled workers in the UK is to obtain British nationality and this route eventually leads to British nationality. The skilled religious worker will initially be granted 3 years visa to work with the faith-based organisation, and the visa can be extended for a further 2 years before applying for settlement. One other benefit of this route is that the religious skilled worker can come to the UK with their spouses and dependants children under 18 years old.
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