Conducting an Internal Audit to Maximize Compliance and Streamline Processes  

Our client had an operation in Angola, where a local, in-house team obtained work permits for employees from around the world. The company was increasingly encountering issues with the authorities, resulting in blockages and delays in obtaining work permits and visas. The company engaged Fragomen to conduct an audit of its immigration policies, workflows, processes and procedures to identify issues and offer solutions for compliance—a request that is increasingly common in today’s compliance-focused immigration landscape.  

We advised our client on:  

• • • The importance of ensuring that expatriates are not employed beyond the prescribed timeframe. This issue was flagged as an area of non-compliance in the current process. 
    • The need for timely extension applications to ensure that employees are working legally at all times. 
    • The importance of following through with the succession plan as prescribed by the law; this is to ensure skills transfer and to replace expatriates with locals once training is complete. Failure to do this was impacting pending applications and any future applications. 
    • New processes and a plan to train the HR team to ensure a consistent and streamlined approach to immigration compliance across all divisions within the company. 

Our client has been able to significantly streamline its internal processes and strengthen its level of immigration compliance, thereby avoiding penalties and sanctions. Where the penalties and sanctions had been imposed, they had been lifted because the company corrected the areas of non-compliance and committed to compliance going forward.