More than 140,000 British businesses, including car washes, vape shops, and kebab takeaways, hold Home Office licences to sponsor overseas workers on skilled worker visas. Hundreds of small firms such as barbers, off-licences, chippies, and chicken shops have successfully applied to become sponsors.
Businesses pay £611 for a licence, which allows them to recruit overseas staff for up to five years before workers can apply for permanent residency. While the scheme covers higher-skilled roles like doctors, engineers, and biochemists, it also permits sponsorship for medium-skilled jobs such as sales supervisors, newsagents, and shopkeepers.
At Kalar Car Wash near Huddersfield town centre in West Yorkshire, a team of six men charge £7 to jet-wash and dry vehicles. When the Daily Mail visited the business last month, none of the workers spoke English except to say the boss was on holiday, and they could not clarify their visa status.
Under Home Office rules, applicants for skilled worker visas must have a solid grasp of English. Current guidelines state sponsored staff must receive a minimum salary of £41,700 per year, compared to the average UK salary of £39,000, or the going rate for the job, whichever is higher. Sales directors must be paid at least £60,000 per year.
Dozens of mosques and Hindu temples can also sponsor overseas staff under religious worker visas costing £340 for a two-year stay. The Islamic Centre of England in Maida Vale, west London, holds a licence and sponsored workers until at least 2022, while currently under Charity Commission investigation for alleged close ties to the Iranian regime.
Political criticism and scheme rules
Conservative MP Neil O'Brien described hiring overseas staff for vape shops and car washes as "farcical" and called the system "yet another back door in our broken immigration system." He warned that workers from abroad are being brought in for roles while over a million young Britons remain out of work and education.
"The scale of abuse in the skilled worker visa system is becoming impossible to ignore," O'Brien said. "These are plainly not skilled jobs. And there are Brits here just as qualified to do them. This is yet another back door in our broken immigration system which the Government must act urgently to shut."
The Home Office said that after raising minimum salary thresholds last summer, businesses like kebab shops are now unlikely to receive approval to sponsor workers. Official figures show skilled sponsor revocations increased by 950 per cent in 2025 compared to 2023, while more than 100 occupations were cut from overseas recruitment access.
Business owners report recruitment struggles
At Swift Mobiles and Vapes in Middlesbrough, shopkeeper Shehzad Iqbal, 41, currently employs one worker from Pakistan on the scheme. Iqbal, who has lived in the town for 13 years, said local residents refuse to apply for available jobs.
"The people in the local area don't want to work, honestly," Iqbal said. "I advertised for staff on Facebook, I spoke to a few people and asked them to come in but they didn't show up."
He added that overseas recruits "know they have to come and know they have to work" to maintain their visa status. "It's a good scheme," he said. "People who are coming, they are working perfectly. If there were people who wanted to work from here I would be happy to get them. But the problem is they don't come, they just p***-take."
Iqbal said his employee fixes mobile phones and laptops as well as serving customers purchasing vapes. He noted that many local residents choose to rely on state benefits, stating, "A lot of people want to chill out, want to stay on benefits. The Government has to stop benefits and then people would work." He added that while he is not currently looking for more staff, "if we need to, we can do it."
Convenience stores and fast food outlets
Under current rules, visa holders can bring partners and children to Britain as dependants if they have worked continuously in a medium-skilled role since at least July last year. At a Premier convenience store in Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, brothers Irslan Rabani, 30, and Irfan Rabani, 28, work as retail managers under visas sponsored by their older brother, Adnan Rabani, 32.
The brothers, who moved from Pakistan, stack shelves, serve customers, and manage staff rotas. Irslan earns around £26,500 under previous salary rules, while Irfan switched from a student visa after studying at Coventry University in 2018.
"I've been here for eight years and we haven't had a single person, a local person, come and ask for a job," Irfan Rabani said. "Not one. If no one comes to ask for a job I can't go and knock on their door and say, 'Come, please, work here.' So we have to hire from outside. It doesn't make any sense."
When reporters visited the Stockton store last month, Home Office officials were present discussing the business with Adnan Rabani. The case comes as disability benefit claims reach record levels, with four million people in England and Wales receiving Personal Independence Payment as of April, 83 per cent of whom are working age.
Local hiring challenges and official response
Other small businesses report similar experiences with hiring. At Bargain Stonegate off-licence near Leeds, an Indian shopkeeper sponsored an assistant from India because local hires were unreliable, stating prospective workers were "coming in for a week, then they don't return for the next."
In Harrow, north London, fast food chain Sam's Chicken arranged to bring 12 overseas workers into a single branch over four years on skilled worker visas, according to a report by GB News.
A Home Office spokesman said holding a licence does not guarantee visa approvals, which are subject to case-by-case assessment following a rigorous process. "Thanks to our decisive action to raise the skilled salary threshold, these kinds of businesses are incredibly unlikely to get a licence approved," the spokesman said.
