Parent company transfers an employee to its Australian branch — a smooth, straight-through grant

An overseas business — a company in China, say, or in the United States — wants to send an employee to work at its Australian branch. How does it apply? Are there any special requirements? Are there any concessions available?

Here is one case that answers all three questions.

Case background

The manager responsible for the sponsoring company came to us. The group is based in China and has branches in both Australia and Europe. The Australian branch had been trading for some time without achieving any real growth, and it had just come across a promising opportunity. The parent company reviewed the situation, concluded that the branch had a management problem, and decided the best answer was to transfer an employee from China with extensive experience in the same role — a Supply and distribution manager — to the Australian branch, which would also cut the cost of communication and settling in. Once a suitable employee had been found who was willing to take up the position in Australia, the manager contacted us to find out what would be required of both the applicant and the employer in this situation.

What you may not know about employer sponsorship

Where an overseas business wants to send an employee to work at its Australian branch, the main route is a Standard Business Sponsorship (SBS) together with the corresponding Subclass 482 nomination application.

An Intra-corporate transferee is an employee currently working for an overseas business who is to be transferred to Australia on a Subclass 482 visa to work for that same business, or for its Australian branch. Applications that meet this definition can access some of the concessions available.

The requirements on the employee are the same as for any other applicant: one year of relevant work experience and English at an overall score of 5.

Requirements on the employer:

If the overseas business has already registered an ABN for its Australian branch, the branch has been operating for some time and there are genuine business activities, then the Australian branch’s ABN should be the applicant for the SBS and the Subclass 482 nomination, carrying the obligations and responsibilities of a sponsoring business. That was our client’s situation.

The other scenario is where the Australian branch has not yet been registered, or has been registered but is not yet trading. In that case the overseas business itself should lodge the SBS and the Subclass 482 nomination as the applicant. Note that here the overseas business must provide additional, thorough evidence of why it is necessary to send an overseas employee to work in Australia — for example, to help establish the Australian branch’s operations, or to perform an agreement with another Australian business.

The extra exemptions

1. Exemption from the LMT requirement

For a Subclass 482 nomination of the intra-corporate transfer type, the LMT requirement can be waived, although a submission must be lodged.

2. Some occupations can be exempt from caveats (a caveat is an additional requirement attached to particular occupations). For certain occupations, if the overseas employee being transferred is currently working in a WTO country, some of the caveats attached to that occupation can be waived — the salary caveat, for example. Take Corporate General Manager (ANZSCO 111211): the caveat currently requires a salary of more than AUD 180,000 a year, but if the sponsored employee is currently working in China and is then transferred to Australia, that requirement can be waived.

Approved in under a month

After working through the relevant requirements in the Migration Regulations, we spent just under a month going back and forth with the Australian branch and the applicant, matching the law to the facts, so that what we lodged was complete from the outset. Less than a month after that, the nomination application and the visa were approved together.