A visa check allows your employer to make sure that you have the proper visa conditions to work:
- In that job
- In that location
- At that time.
Specifically, a visa check allows your employer to check either:
- Your Australian Citizenship details OR
- Your Australian Visa and any conditions associated with it
If you are:
- Not an Australian Citizen: You have to share your visa information with your employer to ensure that you are only working within your legal limits
- An Australian Citizen: You have to show your proof of citizenship to demonstrate to your employer that you do not have any work restrictions
Since 2013 both employers and employees can be responsible for either:
- Performing work that the conditions of their visa does not support
- Employing people do not comply with the work restrictions on their visa
CheckWorkRights is a business that uses technology to simplify the process of applying for and validating a number of employment-related compliance checks through our online application. Our visa check is one of our most popular services.
With the exception of our single check service, there is no charge for you (as the employee) to validate your Employment Visa through our service.
To check your Visa, you will have to either:
- Have your passport scanned by your manager or recruiter which automatically shares your Visa conditions
- Enter your passport details into our online portal which checks your Visa and sends the details to your manager or recruiter
After this first check
- Your employer will get notified when your Visa expires or your work conditions change.
Automatic Visa checks are performed at different times depending on what type of Visa you have and how much longer you have until that Visa expires.
Yes. Your employer can check this information manually through The Department of Home Affairs website. Checking it through CheckWorkRights is a much easier and quicker method that will provide them with the same result.
Yes, in order for an employer to check your work entitlement through either CheckWorkRights or DHA, you must provide your consent for these checks to occur.
The only document you can use is your passport or a photocopy of it. If you do not have either of those things, you will have to apply for a new passport.
If you can’t find your birth certificate, other acceptable forms of identification that you can use are:
- Australian or New Zealand Passport
- Australian Citizenship Certificate
- Certificate of Status of being a New Zealand Citizen in Australia with photo identification such as a driver’s license
- Australian Birth Certificate with Photo Identification such as a driver’s license
In summary, a drivers licence on its own cannot be used for identity verification. It has to be accompanied by a birth certificate. If this is not possible, you can choose another document from the list above for your identity verification.
For more information, you can visit the Department of Home Affairs Website.
Many individuals came to Australia as children, have never left the country, but also never became citizens.
If this is the case, you cannot currently demonstrate the work entitlement component of being Australian because you do not have a passport or other document that can be used to run your employment check.
Since July 1, 2017, the Department of Home Affairs has stopped issuing Immicards for people who can obtain a passport from their birth country.
Therefore, you need to apply for a passport from your birth country and ensure that it is digitally linked to your Permanent Residency documents in Australia.
Since 2013, the law in Australia changed making both the employer and the employee responsible for working illegally in their organisations. Your employer can receive fines if someone is found to be working without legal working rights.
Therefore, many businesses have been working on creating and implementing ways of doing work rights checks that are simple, cost-effective, and can be rolled out across the business.
While employers in the past may or may not have complied with that legislation, your current employer is allowed, and in fact, required to do work entitlement checks.
This practice will only become more common as more employers become compliant with these legal changes.
Yes. Your expired passport can still be linked to a valid visa and can be used for a work rights check.
For work rights purposes, permanent residents are considered visa holders.
This means you have to provide your foreign passport for your visa to be verified. When scanned, your employer will have access to your permanent residency information which comes with unlimited work rights.
For more information, you can visit the department of home affairs website here: https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/already-have-a-visa/check-visa-details-and-conditions/check-conditions-online