When It's More Than Just A Business Trip

Hi I’m Yanna and I am a manager based in Singapore. My consultants and I manage the high volume of immigration applications for multi-national companies, small medium enterprises, regional and local clients, and we assist them to facilitate the transfers of foreign employees and family members into Singapore. We also assist with student pass applications and permanent residency solutions for private and individual clients.

With influx of foreign talent which continue to come to Singapore, the immigration and checkpoints authority and the ministry of manpower work together to exercise proper assessment when granting entry into these individuals. In recent years we’ve been noticing rigorous tightening in work authorization requirements and in our capacity as corporate immigration advisors we partner with our clients in ensuring we give them proper guidance and the right approach is taken to ensure compliance.

One of our recent cases is on the refusal of entry for one of our employees in Singapore. The employee had been travelling to Singapore and a number of locations on a business visa while his employment pass application was still in process. On his third visit he was stopped at immigration, questioned, and eventually asked to depart on the speculation that he was undertaking responsibilities behind the parameters of a business visa. Had we been informed; we would have been able to prepare him and provide him relevant advise on the likelihood of being questioned due to the frequency of his business travels. We would therefore recommend to consult your immigration advisors in order for us to provide appropriate guidance for such instances. We were looped in by the client and were tasked to help clear the record.

We addressed the situation by having several discussions with clients and stakeholders by helping prepare the supporting documentation for the appeal, having several discussions with the authorities, and subsequently monitoring the outcome.

We are pleased to share that the employment pass has since been obtained after a few months of tedious efforts. We are also pleased to confirm that the employee has already moved to Singapore and has commands to employment.