Managing a Complex, Time-sensitive Project

Hi, my name is Teresa Liu and I am a managing Partner of our Australia and New Zealand practices.

I’m delighted to be able to talk to you about an urgent and complex immigration project our team successfully assisted with for a telecommunication, information technology, and consumer electronics company.

The situation related to a need for a large group of workers, both employees of the business as well as contractors, predominantly from India, who were required to participate in a training program in Australia. From a legal standpoint there was a really good level of complexity as it related to the training itself and the time frame of training, as activities did not neatly fall within one visa pathway. Secondly, and from a practical perspective issue regarding the urgent nature to have these workers in Australia to make contractual demands with the company’s client meant that we had to not just look at the legal pathway, make sure that was clear, but also that the process itself was streamlined and efficient as possible. Lastly, an added complication was that this final request happened just prior to the Christmas closer, which in Australia is our long summer holiday period where Australian government authorities both in Australia and overseas were operating on skeleton staff only. This was in addition to most businesses also being closed during that period of time, and similarly short-staffed.

While there was pressure to get things kicked-off very quickly we also knew that due to the nature of activities and timelines that we also needed to spend time and very directly engage, and quickly, with the client and various stakeholders to get a full picture of the project. And that was done so that we could understand and analyze the project and give opinions to the most appropriate visa type for the trainees, which in this case was ultimately the visitor business visa. We also did that to develop practical strategies to enable the best chance of success, to prepare, file and launch those applications, and ultimately make the deadline. Given the number of people, we also needed to work closely with the client to project manage the immigration work.

So, to that, we worked very effectively with the client to streamline information and documents, we triaged the wider group of employees and contractors into smaller groups against restricted time frames and the exact activities. And we very much liaised with the Australian high commission in the country. Before application and filing to ensure a good understanding of the need and situation, the business imperative, and to ultimately seek their support in processing, and to process that with priority. After filing we obviously continued to respond to the high commissions questions where required on particular cases and situations.

The project itself was highly stressful, I think for all parties involved. This was particularly the case as during engagement the businesses needs, and activities shifted for sub-group of workers. That meant that the approach had to be adapted during the process. I think ultimately this case exact was a wonderful example of how well Fragomen, business and government authorities can work together to meet business priorities and at the same time ensure full compliance. And I’d have to say I was really pleased and proud with how the Fragomen team were able to come together to develop that advice and opinion really quickly, to execute this in a streamlined fashion, and work with business and government authorities and really ultimately meet what were very tight timeframes that were required.