About our data

Sponsor badges

“Licensed sponsor (UK)” means the employer holds a UK Home Office licence to sponsor workers. “Recognised sponsor (NL)” means the Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) recognises the employer as a sponsor for work permits. “Permit employer (IE)” means Ireland's Department of Enterprise issued the employer at least two employment permits in the last two years (Ireland has no sponsor licence). “LMIA employer (CA)” means Employment and Social Development Canada issued the employer a positive Labour Market Impact Assessment, its approval to hire a foreign worker or to support one's permanent residence, in the last four published quarters. “Fast-track certified (DK)” means Denmark's SIRI certified the employer for the Fast-track scheme for hiring foreign staff. “H-1B sponsor” on a US job means US Citizenship and Immigration Services approved at least five new H-1B petitions for the employer (new hires and transfers from other employers) in the last two published fiscal years; the badge shows the count, for example “H-1B sponsor: 412 approvals in FY2025–FY2026”. The US has no sponsor licence, so this is a track record, not a permission. Each is a fact about the employer, not about a particular job: it doesn't guarantee that a job offers sponsorship, or that you would qualify. Confirm with the employer before you rely on it. When the job posting itself says it can't sponsor a visa, or asks for an existing right to work, we show no register badge on that job.

A $100,000 payment on new H-1B petitions for workers outside the US (2025 proclamation, extended to September 2027) is blocked by federal courts as of October 2026; check the current rules with the employer.

We show the badge on a job only when the job is located in that country, and only when the employer match is exact or was reviewed by our team. For the UK we only use A-rated licences. We check the registers weekly and stop showing a badge if our copy is more than 30 days old. If a badge looks wrong, email employers@expatjobs.io.

• United Kingdom: Register of licensed sponsors: workers, published by the UK Home Office. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
• Netherlands: Public register of recognised sponsors, published by the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) (Immigratie- en Naturalisatiedienst).
• Ireland: Employment permits issued to companies, published by the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment. Contains Irish Public Sector Data licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Permit counts aggregated and matched to employers by Expat Jobs. We show only employers with at least two permits.
• Canada: Employers who were issued a positive LMIA, published by Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC). Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada. Approved positions aggregated and matched to employers by Expat Jobs. Numbered companies and franchisees are not matched to the brand they operate, and an automatic match needs the employer's legal name and at least two approved positions.
• Denmark: Certified companies, published by the Danish Agency for International Recruitment and Integration (SIRI).
• United States: H-1B Employer Data Hub, published by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS); US government data in the public domain. We count “New Employment” and “Change of Employer” approvals, not extensions, summed across the employer's spellings and sites. An automatic match needs the employer's own petitioner name; one-word names need at least 20 approvals, and a trade name (“DBA”) is never matched to the brand on its own.

None of the publishers endorses Expat Jobs. Visa rules change; see our Terms of Use for the limits of the information we provide.