UK Ancestry Visa only partially applied in FM

Hello, can you please provide us a link to some official source which backs up what you are saying, thank you.

4 minutes ago, Zachary Whyte said:

Hello, can you please provide us a link to some official source which backs up what you are saying, thank you.

https://www.brabners.com/blogs/football-and-immigration-considering-various-routes-entry-part-2 from January 2022:
"For those players and club personnel who do not meet the GBE criteria for an International Sportsperson Visa, and where there are no family-based routes available that would give individuals the ability to live and work in the UK (such as an Ancestry Visa or Spouse Visa), Clubs may be inclined to consider using the Visitor Visa route where short-term, limited entry is required."

https://newfieldslaw.com/news/the-new-immigration-rules-for-uk-sport/ from August 2020:
"An individual with a sportsperson visa is restricted in their entitlement to take up additional work for another employer. Supplementary employment is restricted to 20 hours and should generally be confined to work as a sportsperson. A sportsperson in the UK on a different type of visa (such as the family or ancestry route) will not be restricted."

https://www.restlessworld.com.au/blogs/news/what-you-can-and-can-not-do-on-an-ancestry-visa from March 2021:
Paraphrased - "When we think about all the UK working visas, the Ancestry Visa is one of the most expensive BUT also one of the best visas to obtain. Yep, that's right, you want to play and get paid for professional sport or be a professional coach, this working visa allows that. You need to have a Grandparent who was born in the UK and you are a commonwealth citizen. If you do not have either of these you are not eligible for this visa. If you have lived and worked in the UK for your 5 years, your aged between 18 and 64, you've spent no more than 180 days outside the UK in any 12 months of the last 5 years you can apply for settlement (ILR - 'Indefinite leave to remain') and eventually end up with your very own British Passport!"

https://www.gov.uk/ancestry-visa:
Paraphrased - "You can stay in the UK for 5 years on this visa. If you’ve lived in the UK for 5 years on this visa, you may be able to either: Apply to extend your visa for a further 5 years, or apply to settle permanently in the UK (apply for ‘indefinite leave to remain’). With a UK Ancestry visa you can: Work; Study; Bring your partner or child. Your work can be: Paid or voluntary; Full-time or part time; In self-employment or in a job where you’re employed by someone else. You must prove that you: Are 17 or over; Have enough money without help from public funds to support and house yourself and any dependants; Can and plan to work in the UK.  You must show that you have a grandparent born in one of the following circumstances: In the UK, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man; Before 31 March 1922 in what is now Ireland; On a ship or aircraft that was either registered in the UK or belonged to the UK government. You cannot claim UK ancestry through step-parents, but can claim ancestry if: You or your parent were adopted; Your parents or grandparents were not married."

The last quote from the UK Government is probably the clearest, the impression I get from is that the person can work in any industry as long as they can prove that they are able to. Because of how specific the ruling is, the best way to apply it in FM, would probably be disregard the 17 Year Old portion of the ruling, and to just assume that any player you sign from a Commonwealth Nation has UK Grandparents, and give them the same Work Permit circumvention that are currently given to players from Overseas Territory Act nations, by making them also Non-Foreign.

I've checked in the Pre-Game Editor, and such a change (making a Commonwealth agreement, and adding it to 'Nations Treated as Non-Foreign') would only apply to England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Republic of Ireland only has a Non-Foreign agreement with UK & Ireland nations. Attached is a example image of how such a change could work with the database, made with the Pre-Game Editor.

Also, as a forethought: If this change is implemented, despite keeping UK & Ireland, as part of the 'Nations Treated as Non-Foreign' section of those aforementioned nations, it might be prudent to add England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as nations to the suggested new Commonwealth agreement, simply so there is some future-proofing, on the off-chance that the agreement is ever needed to be used in another Commonwealth nation, such as Australia, India or South Africa, which are all playable nations, the UK nations are not unintentionally excluded from that agreement.

2 hours ago, CTxCB said:

https://www.brabners.com/blogs/football-and-immigration-considering-various-routes-entry-part-2 from January 2022:
"For those players and club personnel who do not meet the GBE criteria for an International Sportsperson Visa, and where there are no family-based routes available that would give individuals the ability to live and work in the UK (such as an Ancestry Visa or Spouse Visa), Clubs may be inclined to consider using the Visitor Visa route where short-term, limited entry is required."

https://newfieldslaw.com/news/the-new-immigration-rules-for-uk-sport/ from August 2020:
"An individual with a sportsperson visa is restricted in their entitlement to take up additional work for another employer. Supplementary employment is restricted to 20 hours and should generally be confined to work as a sportsperson. A sportsperson in the UK on a different type of visa (such as the family or ancestry route) will not be restricted."

https://www.restlessworld.com.au/blogs/news/what-you-can-and-can-not-do-on-an-ancestry-visa from March 2021:
Paraphrased - "When we think about all the UK working visas, the Ancestry Visa is one of the most expensive BUT also one of the best visas to obtain. Yep, that's right, you want to play and get paid for professional sport or be a professional coach, this working visa allows that. You need to have a Grandparent who was born in the UK and you are a commonwealth citizen. If you do not have either of these you are not eligible for this visa. If you have lived and worked in the UK for your 5 years, your aged between 18 and 64, you've spent no more than 180 days outside the UK in any 12 months of the last 5 years you can apply for settlement (ILR - 'Indefinite leave to remain') and eventually end up with your very own British Passport!"

https://www.gov.uk/ancestry-visa:
Paraphrased - "You can stay in the UK for 5 years on this visa. If you’ve lived in the UK for 5 years on this visa, you may be able to either: Apply to extend your visa for a further 5 years, or apply to settle permanently in the UK (apply for ‘indefinite leave to remain’). With a UK Ancestry visa you can: Work; Study; Bring your partner or child. Your work can be: Paid or voluntary; Full-time or part time; In self-employment or in a job where you’re employed by someone else. You must prove that you: Are 17 or over; Have enough money without help from public funds to support and house yourself and any dependants; Can and plan to work in the UK.  You must show that you have a grandparent born in one of the following circumstances: In the UK, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man; Before 31 March 1922 in what is now Ireland; On a ship or aircraft that was either registered in the UK or belonged to the UK government. You cannot claim UK ancestry through step-parents, but can claim ancestry if: You or your parent were adopted; Your parents or grandparents were not married."

The last quote from the UK Government is probably the clearest, the impression I get from is that the person can work in any industry as long as they can prove that they are able to. Because of how specific the ruling is, the best way to apply it in FM, would probably be disregard the 17 Year Old portion of the ruling, and to just assume that any player you sign from a Commonwealth Nation has UK Grandparents, and give them the same Work Permit circumvention that are currently given to players from Overseas Territory Act nations, by making them also Non-Foreign.

Something else that backs up the examples that the UK Ancestry Visa can be used for sports work is that on https://www.gov.uk/ancestry-visa, it simply lists 'Work' as something that they can do, but explicitly lists 'work, except as a sportsperson or coach' as something their partner or child cannot do on https://www.gov.uk/ancestry-visa/your-partner-and-children while registered under that visa.

Edited March 15, 2023 by CTxCB

Appreciate all that info you’ve given us, I’ll flag it back to the relevant team.

Hi there, thanks for all the detail.  Apologies if I'm missing something but I think you are misunderstanding how we deal with this issue in game.  At the research level, we input other nationalities for players in addition to their primary nationality.  Sometimes this will be because a player was born somewhere and grew up somewhere else, but quite often it is because a player has declared that they have a parent or grandparent that makes them eligible for that nation (either residency or international duty).  While I admit that there might be players missing this data in game, this will often be down to the fact that the data is simply not available - i.e. we don't know if the player has a British parent or grandparent.  If a UK nation is entered into the "other nationality" field though, this player in FM will automatically be able to be signed by UK clubs without the need for a work permit in game.  You suggest assuming "any player signed from a Commonwealth nation has a UK grandparent", but this is surely in most cases not true, especially as we have already added a UK nation as an "other" nationality for a lot of the players where where we know it already applies, meaning in game they would not have to apply for a work permit anyway.  You'd just end up with thousands of players being wrongly eligible for a work permit in game.

To conclude on the above, the line from the article you quoted above seems to be key "You need to have a Grandparent who was born in the UK AND you are a commonwealth citizen".  This is an "and" not an "or".  If any player in the FM DB has a UK grandparent (or parent) and this is known, this will be input in data and the player will not require a work permit in game.  If a player in real life signs for a UK club via the fact they have a UK grandparent and they do not have a second nationality set in FM, then the research team will set this at the next opportunity.

Quite aside from this though, I would suggest that the different UK football governing bodies have different rules that apply to their competitions that don't necessarily follow government rules.  So we would need some evidence from, say Premier League or EFL or Welsh FA handbooks that apply to this issue.

Also helpful from you would be the following:

- An example of a player in real life who has gained a work permit in a UK nation through the method you describe that is present in game with a work permit but without an "other nationality" of a UK nation. (The work permit will need to have been issued after the final Brexit date, but without the player residing in the country beforehand and also be a player that doesn't qualify through international appearances or other qualification means).

- An example of a player in FM who is ineligible for a work permit (or gets refused a work permit) when in real life you think they should be eligible to gain a work permit.

Without real life examples of there being a discrepancy between real life and FM, it is difficult to see this as an active, or at least pressing issue.

If you still think there is an issue with how we currently deal with this in game, then we will need to boil it down to something simple and have the requested evidence to back it up if we are to consider making a change.

Thanks a lot!