UK Au Pair Program in 2021
02-02-2021
Which Nationalities Can Smartaupairs Work With in 2021?
- British & British Overseas Nationals
- EU Nationals with UK pre-settled status
- T5 Youth Mobility Visa Holders (Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Canada
- UK Ancestry Visa Holders (E.g. in some cases South African nationals)
- Student Visa Holders (ONLY if the visa clearly stipulates that work is indeed allowed). Typically hours are limited to 20h/week.
Brexit & EU Nationals
The UK Home Office has truly turned a blind eye on the situation when it comes to EU au pairs.
We remain hopeful that YMS will at some stage be adopted by if not EU collectively then at least by some EU nations. But this is looking to be more of a long term hope rather than something we can expect to happen in the short term.
Visitor Route/Visa = Confirmed repeatedly by Home Office & Immigration Lawyers to be illegal. Future au pairs are now officially classified as "skilled workers". We already seeing posts au pairs without appropriate visa/pre-settled status being turned away at the borders (one even detained at Heathrow!) due to spot checks so this is already being enforced.
Student Short Term Visa = Not viable, as this allows no work.
Student Long Term Visa T4 = Potentially allows the applicant to work up to 20h/week. Qualifying sponsor language schools are prohibitively expensive based on our research so far.
T5/Youth Mobility Visa = not yet launched for extended to new nationalities. Existing eligible nationalities can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/youth-mobility
Skilled Worker/Sponsor Route = Although au pairs are technically now allowed to apply for a skilled worker visa, in practise the minimum wage requirement per annum is is excess of 20k.