Visas, handled by a lawyer.
Student, partner and family, employer sponsorship and permanent residency, business and investor visas, and review when a visa is refused or cancelled. Every application and every deadline on one file, in full view.
Student visas and education pathways
A student visa is a decision about where you are heading, not just the next course. The course, the provider and the visa have to line up with where you want to end up, whether that is a qualification and home, or a skilled visa and permanent residency. Conditions attach to the visa for its whole life, and a missed one can undo the plan.
Map the course and the visa against where you want to end up, and check the conditions you would be living under.
Family and partner visas
Partner, parent and child visas turn on evidence of a relationship or a family tie, and the Department decides on the paper in front of it. Most refusals come from a thin file, not a weak relationship. The work is in knowing what the decision-maker looks for and presenting it in order.
List the evidence you already have against what the visa needs, and tell you where the gaps are before anything is lodged.
Employer sponsorship and permanent residency
An employer can sponsor a worker for a temporary visa and, in the right stream, for permanent residency. The business, the position and the person each have to meet their own tests, and the sequence matters. For the worker, the route from a sponsored visa to residency has steps that are easy to miss while working.
Check that the business, the role and the person each qualify, and set out the route to residency with its steps in order.
Business and investor visas
Visas for people who invest in or run a business in Australia carry requirements on the business, the money and the applicant's own history, and the criteria have changed more than once in recent years. The visa is only part of it: the business structure, tax and the family's own visas have to fit together.
Confirm which stream is open to you today, and look at the business and family position as one picture.
Refusals, cancellations and appeals
A refusal or a cancellation is not usually the end. Many decisions can be reviewed at the Administrative Review Tribunal, and some go on to the courts. The Tribunal looks at the case afresh, so new evidence can be put in. The catch is time: the review window is short and in most cases cannot be extended.
Read the decision letter, confirm the deadline to the day, and tell you whether review is open and worth taking.
Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Thai clients
Many of the firm's migration clients speak Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Thai. This site and the enquiry form are in Chinese, Japanese and Korean, and documents in those languages are read and used in your matter as they are, with certified translations arranged only where the Department requires them.
Take the enquiry in your language and set out, in plain terms, what the Department will want in English.
A lawyer, not a migration agent
Since 22 March 2021, an Australian legal practitioner gives immigration assistance as a lawyer, and is no longer registered with the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority. That changes what you get. Your matter is run by a lawyer bound by a lawyer's duties, to you and to the court, under the professional rules that apply to every solicitor in New South Wales. What you tell us is protected by legal professional privilege. And if a decision goes to the Tribunal or the courts, the lawyer who prepared the application can run the review.
Refusal and cancellation deadlines
If a visa is refused or cancelled, the time to seek review is short and runs from when the decision is taken to have been notified, which can be earlier than the day you read it. The limits differ by the kind of decision, by whether the applicant is in Australia, and by whether the applicant is in immigration detention, where they are shorter still. The Tribunal cannot extend most of them, and an application lodged a day late is usually not an application at all. Court review has its own limit, with an extension possible in some cases. We do not quote the figures here because they change and because the right one depends on your letter. If you have received a decision, send it to us today and we will tell you the date.
Fees to fit the matter
We are open to a range of fee models: fixed, capped, staged, hourly or a blend. We settle the right one with you, in writing, before work starts.
Gaurav de Fontgalland has practised for more than twenty years, including as an equity partner at two BigLaw firms, and founded Fontgalland Lawyers in 2010. He acts for clients across Australia, Asia, Europe and the United States.
Tell us about your matter.
The area is already chosen. Tell us a little more, your industry, and who is involved, so we can run a conflict check before we speak.
Nothing you send here is confidential until we have confirmed we can act. Keep it to names and the broad nature of the matter.