Originally posted by Kevin Mcleod
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Any non-EU immigrant simply doesn't have any right whatsoever to work in the UK. To do so, the migrant worker needs to have a potential employer willing to be his or her "sponsor" in a work permit. The sponsorship process is quite complicated and involves requiring the employer to "prove" that his prospective migrant employee "can do a kind of job that no single individual in the EU can". Depending on the kind of job done by the migrant worker, there are different ways to "prove" it, but regarding football players it was agreed that it is directly related to the number of International call-ups a said player had in the previous years. Anyway, once the sponsorship is sorted either the employee or the employer acting in his name should apply for the work visa. This is the actual document that gets stamped on someone's passport, or as has been happening recently in the UK, issued as a plastic photocard.
The thing is that each work permit and visa is directly linked to a specific employer. So, if the migrant worker changes jobs, as Sandro did, the new employer will have to apply for a new sponsorship and than ask for a new visa to be issued.
Apparently, what happened is that QPR successfully sponsored Sandro but failed to apply for a new visa. This was either a case of the guys at QPR not knowing that it was required or of them thinking that Sandro would apply for the visa himself and Sandro thinking that the club would apply in his behalf. It is a bit tricky, because in Sandro's case for example, he would still had a visa photocard saying something like "valid until 2016" that became void the moment he ceased to be a Tottenham's employee. It is possible that everyone involved simply thought that the moment they have sorted the sponsorship part, his current visa would still be valid — which, as explained above, isn't the case.
Either way it was a massive and unforgivable mix up from the club, but what i am trying to show you guys is that the club didn't "unknowingly signed an illegal immigrant" as some have implied here.
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