4 Reasons Why You Need The Right Immigration Advice
Immigration is a myriad of obstacles from law to politics; to try and find the most important and helpful points is like looking for rumored gold in a riverbed. Tricky situations like deportation, denial of entry or other potentially problematic situations with employees could put your company under MOM’s microscope. No one wants that.
Even with the power of Google at your fingertips, everybody who has migrated before knows the process of immigration is still very stressful and chaotic.
Regardless if you are a company trying to bring a foreign employee into the country or an individual; if you’re set on migrating, you don’t want to take your time with it, it’s stressful enough as it is already.
You want it to be done swiftly without a hitch and of course without spending too much money on it.
Immigration is personal and as such every case is different, thus our first tip for you is to take the advice from forums or from hearsay with a pinch of salt.
Here’s 4 reasons why you need the right immigration advice from an immigration specialist to not only make life easier for you, but to also get you safely to your destination.
1. Sorting Immigration Requirements
Let’s get this one out of the way first. Every Singaporean work pass (known as visa as well) has its own specific requirements.
If you don’t meet the requirements, you are legally not allowed to be working/living in the country on that specific visa/work pass.
Even if you have an outstanding HR team, they may not be fully aware of the different requirements.
One of our clients hired an employee for a key position who happened to be a dependent pass holder. Unfortunately, the HR team did not clear the necessary requirements for this employee and after just a day at work, this employee had to leave as she did not apply for a Letter of Consent (LOC) and was thus legally not allowed to work.
What happened: Resources wasted, HR got into trouble, Reputation tainted
Immigration and the law go hand in hand, don’t break the law foolishly just because you were unsure about immigration requirements.
2. Avoid Employee Compliance Risk
The last thing you want is for your company to be jeopardized by an employee. You hired them to improve your business, not pull it down.
However, this was the case for our client who failed to cancel their ex-employee’s work pass when he left the company. Long story short, this became an issue when the ex-employee returned to Singapore to work for his new employer, he was detained at the customs as he was technically still holding a work pass registered under his ex-employer.
We won’t go into too much details to spare you the headache, but this not only tainted our client’s reputation but also was a grave mistake borne by our client as they were unaware that they had to cancel their ex-employee’s work pass when he left.
It really is the last thing you would think of when an employee leaves, you’re probably more focused on looking for a replacement or handling leaving formalities etc. However, it was a costly mistake for the company and could have easily been avoided if they had accurate immigration advice.
3. Avoid Risk of Deportation or Denial of Entry
There is a fine line between being on a business trip and working here illegally without the right work pass.
Based on our experience, many of our clients who have had such encounters mostly happened due to travelling frequently in and out of the country for business trips without a work pass.
Being denied of entry or worse, deportation could ban you from re-entering the country or make re-entering the country a lot more complicated than it needs to be.
Spare yourself the headache and worry by consulting immigration specialists who can provide you reliable advice, such as whether you should apply for a business visa in order to prevent such incidents at the immigration customs.
4. Improve Success Rate with your Residency Applications
New Singaporeans/ PR would tell you getting approved of your residency applications on your first shot is akin to winning the lottery.
With an influx of applications, your application could be stuck in the system for 4 months (if you’re lucky) to a year and after it finally gets picked up by the immigration officer, gets rejected after a quick glance.
And the worst thing is, you won’t know why you got rejected.
If you’ve been tossing and turning in bed trying to figure out why you got rejected for the 100th time, you should definitely consider consulting an immigration specialist to review your application and fine tune it for you to boost your success rates.
Each application cycle takes approximately 4 to 6 months. Some people have been trying for years on their own to get their PR. While each application may not cost much, over time the opportunity costs add up to a lot.
Engaging an immigration specialist is thus an investment and not a waste of money. Immigration matters often get neglected when it comes to relocating, yet one small error, and it could jeopardise your entire move.
You will have 99 problems (if not more) when relocating, don’t let immigration matters be one of them. We’ve got you, contact us and we will help you overcome complexities you are facing with work visa or PR applications.
Co-written by Wong Jiayi & Sulochana Uthirapathi
Transform Borders is not only an immigration service provider, we are also your strategic partner where your business success and your personal move is at the heart of our advise and recommendations. We stand by our believe that Immigration is Personal, be it a move by you, your family or your business. Drop us a message at [email protected].