We live in an era of increased immigration enforcement, where visa denials are increasing and the responsibilities and risks to employers are greater than ever. So how can employers stay ahead of the business immigration law compliance issues? What guarantees can law firms recommend to reduce the risk and liability of their clients?
These are three areas of interest to consider when planning an immigration compliance strategy for your business.
1. Preparing for Investigation
It’s no secret that immigration enforcement in the workplace has increased under the current administration. To put it simply, the Home Affairs Investigations opened more new workplace cases in recent years more than before. If you employ foreign nationals, this is some of the investigation that organizations may face.
VEVO Check
Employers are responsible for verifying the identity and work authorization of everyone they hire through the VEVO check, and the VEVO check will continue to increase. Companies can prepare for potential investigations by being proactive in their internal review of VEVO checks.
- Ensure that the employee has the work rights through VEVO check.
- Create a process to ensure that all technical errors (such as omissions) are rectified
- Maintain proper records
- Review your process to track immigration status and make sure employee has the work rights at all time.
No organization wants to end up with Home Affairs noncompliance issues; monetary penalties for immigration compliance violations range from thousands of dollars for single offenses to hundreds of thousands given the cumulative nature of the fines. With so much to follow regarding immigration compliance, consider using Complize to comply with immigration law in real-time and save time.
The department of Home Affairs or Border Force can come knocking anytime. The best way to stay ahead of the curve when visiting a site is to prepare employees for possible questions. Officers may ask questions about duties, salary, training and location, all for the purpose of verifying information submitted in the initial visa application. Prepare employees to answer the questions by going through Complize online training.
2. Assess Your Support Needs
After the Covid-19 pandemic massive hit, it will be a busy year for business immigration compliance. One of the most proactive ways to continue is to ensure that your team has the bandwidth needed to handle the workloads that will be required to meet changing compliance regulations.
Take the time to assess the capacity of your inner resources and identify gaps where you may need additional support. Consider the following options:
INTERNAL EMPLOYEE
It can be complicated to hire in-house legal counsel or human resources specialists for immigration matters. Even when the in-house legal team has the right immigration background, the high workload during the immigration restriction season is often too much to handle for some internal staff.
PARALEGALS
Having the right support for high-volume seasons is essential to the effectiveness of your immigration legal process; and bringing in backers seems to help in the short term. However, paralegals are not an effective long-term solution because of the severe shortage of immigration professionals in the industry. Hiring from a limited group during the bulk immigration season also comes with a hefty price tag, if you’re lucky enough to find one of the first.
OUTSIDE LEGAL SUPPORT
Instead of scrambling to find an immigration legal assistant during peak season or paying sky-high salaries to an in-house expert, consider outsourcing legal immigration services. High Quality. Consider Complize as the right support can lighten your team’s workload and responsibilities, help you get things done on time, and save expensive internal resources.
3. Sponsorship obligations
Immigration law requires registered business sponsors to track records up to 7 years, notify Home Affairs of certain changes in circumstance and cooperate with immigration inspectors.
One of the critical keys to organise the records for up to 7 years will be to go digital. Having lots of physical paper, 2000 sponsored employee on a single excel sheet, and multiple files and folders to keep their scan copies are extremely messy when the Department of Home affairs comes to visit.
One option to solve this problem will be to have software with an intelligent dashboard that has one view of everything, including compliance notification, automation workflows, past seven years records, and more. One of the recommended simplified immigration compliance software will be Complize.
To stay on top of immigration compliance, organisations can purchase a product that meets all of the required compliance requirements. Complize is a Saas platform designed to enable organisations to manage immigration compliance, increase organisational knowledge and reduce risk. Content is developed and designed by the well respected Australian immigration law firm, Hammond Taylor, and the IT systems are managed by Complize, an Australian IT firm.
Contact us now to arrange a free demonstration.
