457 Visas for a restaurant

About Our Client

Our client is a high profile restaurant group who had previously been managing their 457 visas internally. They employ over 500 Australian workers over 7 venues and have received many industry awards for their product. They are family owned with no external investors and their financial information is closely held.

The Problem

They were reluctant to process existing visa holders to PR due to the high amount of paperwork that they were required to provide. The owner of the business also preferred to not expose a lot of highly confidential documents to a variety of migration agents. This led to them not using the program to the full capacity and encountering difficulties in their operations with skill gaps in some senior positions and positions in their kitchen. They also had a large number of employees who were eligible for sponsorship who were potentially going to leave employment and seek sponsorship opportunities elsewhere.

The Solution

Our first task was to show them that we could provide minimal evidence of the businesses finances by working with their accountant to provide the core information without having to disclose full financial reports. We then performed an audit of all of their existing visa holders and plugged that into our online system that they can access at any time to see where all their visa holders are in terms of PR eligibility, salary, location and conditions. We streamlined all of the businesses documents so that minimal updating was required and we could ensure eligibility for the 15 permanent visa applications that were pending. Finally, we provided them with a monitoring solution to ensure the Department were kept up to date with any changes to circumstances ensuring there would be no issues with future applications. We are currently working with them to ensure as many of their eligible employees may apply for PR before the changes that come into effect March 2018.