Work Visa Sponsorshop (457?)

[simran]

Hi All, 

Has anyone personally used a local (Australian) Immigration Agent or Lawyer to get someone a work visa for Australia. 

My friend runs a startup (with strong growing revenue) and wants to sponsor someone from Singapore.

Would appreciate if someone can point me to an agent / lawyer they might have used to facilitate a work sponsorship. 

thanks,

simran. 

[Geoff McQueen | AffinityLive]

Another case where DIY is probably your best answer. Unfortunately I haven't written up the how-to post for it.

The short version is:

• Be a Pty Ltd company in Australia.
• Register with immi.gov.au for the right to be an employer sponsor. They ask you a bunch of questions but it isn't too arduous.
• Then apply for the right to sponsor *someone* on a 457 visa. The best thing you can do is show you already have someone on the team and you're paying them what you're proposing to pay for the 457 hire. This isn't easy if you're super early stage, but if you can make your position (or someone else's) look the same, then you can be in luck.
• You'll need to pay them more then $53,800 (may have gone up a bit since I last did it); go with $55K to be safe. Provide the employment agreement and salary proof of your existing Aussie employee as proof of reference being legit.
• You'll likely be approved fairly quickly with the above. Australia is *so* much more efficient for this discretionary stuff than the US. And their web-based form is well designed and easy to use (cough cough, US Dept of Labor LCA)
• Then your team member can apply using your number as a company (forgotten the number's specific name). Their piece is supposedly quite easy (but I wasn't the one doing it).

Fragomen will charge you $5K-$10K for this. Of you can do it yourself for the $2K (approx) in fees from the govt.

Geoff

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[simran]

Thankyou so much for the very informative answer Geoff. 

Will ask my friend to chose a path and follow it - although i suspect he is going to go with the Fargomen approach :) 

simran.

[Hamish Ogilvy]

Very timely Geoff, we're just starting this process now... Out of interest, when you say quick, is that days, weeks or months?

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[imad]

The first 5 steps in Geoff's email are a matter of days. The 6th step where employee has to apply for the visa depends which country he is coming from. If he is coming from a Cat A country then a month is a fair estimate. Otherwise it may take up to 6 months.

Imad

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[Hamish Ogilvy]

Out of interest, we just got our sponsorship approved. Notes that might help others:

• Took 2.5 months, although there was a brief gov strike in there. Chatting to the case manager, apparently it is typical to take 2-3 months for each step of the process (being able to sponsor, then actually sponsoring)
  
• You can "link" multiple steps and do them together. So if you have someone ready, use the TRN to link both applications together. Note: This restarts the timer, so be ready with both.
• We got tripped up on the training plan part. The most applicable IT courses to us are free, none of the industry funds are applicable. We used overseas conference workshops to meet the threshold. The plan must clearly show projected payroll, org chart, cost per training activity and delivered benefit to the staff.
• You can request priority assistance if your case is urgent. To do this you need to email your TRN to the 457 email address with the subject "Priority Request for Assistance".

On Wednesday, 8 April 2015 12:22:05 UTC+10, Geoff McQueen wrote: