The Rugby Football Union has considered imposing a five-year residency rule on England if World Rugby fails to increase the existing eligibility level.
A player currently becomes eligible when they have lived in a country for three years, but a campaign led by World Rugby vice-chairman Agustin Pichot is seeking to raise the level up to five.
The sport's global governing body will vote on whether to change the rule at its biannual council meeting in May, and RFU chief executive Ian Ritchie has made England's position clear.
"Our view will be that a five-year qualification is the optimum position to be in. We feel that an increase from three to five years is absolutely the route to go down and that's what we'd support," Ritchie told reporters.
"In an ideal world there would be universality of regulation and there's a helpful way of dealing with this, and that's by moving the World Rugby regulation from three to five.
"We'll wait until the debate at World Rugby and see if we can move it from three to five years and then we'd review it after that. If it stays at three then we'd have to think again and review it."
Last autumn England gave starts to Nathan Hughes and Semesa Rokoduguni, both of whom were born in Fiji but qualified for Eddie Jones's squad having lived in Britain for three years.
