Obtaining Accredited Sponsorship Status with the Department of Home Affairs

In this article, Rita Chowdhury, Principal of boutique immigration law firm Integrate Legal explains the steps your business can take to cut down on visa application paperwork and get work visas for employees approved in record time.

What is Accredited Sponsorship?

• Accredited Sponsorship status is granted to Australian employers that have a significant, regular and ongoing need to sponsor and nominate overseas workers under the Temporary Skill Shortage (TSS) Visa (subclass 482).
• This is designed to ensure that low-risk sponsors can access priority allocation and streamlined processing for all nomination and visa applications.

What are the benefits?

Automatic Priority Processing of visa applications

All TSS visa and nomination applications lodged by Accredited Sponsors are given priority processing.

Standard Business Sponsor applications take over 4 weeks to process. By comparison, Accredited Sponsor applications are processed in 1-5 days.

Streamlined Processing (auto-grant) of nomination applications

Streamline Processing is available for certain nomination applications lodged by Accredited Sponsors. This means the Department of Home Affairs automatically approves the nomination application immediately after lodgement.

Less Application Paperwork

Visa applicants are not required to obtain overseas police clearance certificates if their Accredited Sponsor is willing to provide a character reference letter. 

Accredited Sponsors are permitted to post advertisements on their business websites.

Can I Get Accredited?

• Firstly, you must be a Standard Business Sponsor. You can apply for a Standard Business Sponsor and accreditation simultaneously. If you already are a Standard Business Sponsor, you can apply for accredited status when you renew your existing sponsorship.
• Secondly, you must fall within one of the following categories

Category	Description
Australian Trusted Traders	You are a current Australian Trusted Trader, with an Australian workforce made up of a least of 75% Australian workers
Low volume usage and high percentage of Australian workers (at least 85%)	In addition to having a high percentage of Australian workers, you should have a 97% approval rate for nomination applications in the last year, and have been a standard business sponsor for at least one year
High volume usage and medium percentage of Australian workers (at least 75%)	In addition to having a medium percentage of Australian workers, you should have a 97% approval rate for nomination applications in the last two years, and have been a standard business sponsor for at least two years

Help with applying?

We have successfully obtained accredited sponsorship for many of our clients.  If you are interested in discussing whether you are eligible or in proceeding with an application don’t hesitate to contact a member of our team at hello@integratelegal.com

About Integrate Legal

Integrate Legal is a boutique immigration law firm with expertise in business and employment related visa applications.  Integrate Legal is led by Rita Chowdhury, an award-winning immigration law specialist with over 18 years’ experience.  For more information on our firm go to:  www.integratelegal.com