Tier 3 Visa - Never Implemented and discontinued

Tier 3 Visa Overview

When the UK's employment-based immigration was split into five tiers. Tier 3 was envisaged as the Tier for unskilled migrants and intended to replace existing low-skilled immigration programmes. However, by the time the five-tier points-based system came into operation in 2008, the UK government felt there was no need for any unskilled immigration from outside the European Economic Area. It was designed to replace schemes such as the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme (SAWS) and the Sectors Based Scheme (SBS) currently only available for Bulgarians and Romanians.

Consequently, Tier 3 was never operational and on 25th March 2013, Prime Minister David Cameron announced that it was to be 'shut down completely'.