Immigration Law Firms Increasingly Under Pressure to Assist Remote and Hybrid Employment Arrangements

Immigration compliance issues continue to expand for law firms working to assist companies with remote work practices that emerged throughout the pandemic period. Companies moving to more fluid work models that are not centered around relocating employees now find themselves faced with immigration issues that lie in between employment law and tax concerns.

Companies seeking assistance from immigration lawyers frequently find that they need to seek help with situations that cannot be addressed with standard visa arrangements. Employees working in split countries, workers asking to stay after temporary assignments, or even managers overseeing staff members based in another country require additional assistance with their visa and sponsorship applications.

The problem becomes especially acute for multinational corporations that operate through regional branches across Southeast Asia and in Australia. Many of such companies have regional offices in places like Singapore or Hong Kong but allow parts of their work force to remain outside these locations through remote working conditions. Immigrations laws in these locations are not geared towards addressing such arrangements.

In practice, many legal advisors indicate that such companies discover immigration risks only after implementing certain remote working practices within their organization. Workers using travel permission to enter other countries and perform their jobs may find themselves in the middle of immigration law concerns as well.

What makes it harder is the fact that there are significant differences between the jurisdictions regarding the length of remote work stays, local payments made by the employee and employer-sponsored status. Multinational companies trying to implement flexible employee policies often discover that immigration compliance is not fully consistent with their assumptions.

Firms specializing in immigration advice increasingly need to spend more time reviewing internal company procedures and developing new policies. One common task for law firms is helping companies design approval processes that will highlight any immigration risks before the employee relocates temporarily abroad.

There are also cases where the law firm needs to train managers in charge of approving international remote work for their staff members while being unaware of possible consequences. Even a brief temporary work abroad approved by the manager may lead to serious immigration problems.

Such trends affect not only large multinational companies but small businesses that usually do not have dedicated legal departments to monitor immigration issues. Large businesses may be able to handle regional changes in immigration laws independently. Smaller enterprises, on the other hand, are likely to rely on the law firm for such consultations.

In addition, there is always the question of how visible the immigration issues become. Many governments in APAC show increasing interest in tracking immigrant activities, coordinating taxes and requiring reports from employers. As a result, remote work practices that had never been monitored before may now become easy to track with payroll records.

This situation puts the pressure on immigration law firms to move from case-by-case processing to providing ongoing guidance for the client. Law firms need to advise clients about immigration compliance in relation to certain mobility patterns rather than assist them with individual cases.

In addition, it may become challenging to provide clear guidelines if the company is operating under its globally applied remote working policies in various locations that have different rules regarding visa applications. Lawyers need to explain to the client the reasons for such discrepancies.

At the same time, the employee expectations have changed significantly due to remote work. Employees accustomed to mobility become less willing to follow the rules. Therefore, employers are forced to seek external legal advice on how to address immigration issues while retaining their talent.