Can the worker start before the visa is granted? What the employer may ask of a worker on a bridging visa, a visitor, or someone still overseas

MARN 1576536

No work in Australia without a visa that allows it

A non-citizen may work in Australia only while holding a visa whose conditions permit the work, and an approved nomination, a lodged visa application and an employer's eagerness are none of those things. The 482 gives work rights from the day it is granted and, for a worker abroad, from the day they arrive on it; until then the worker's position is whatever visa they hold today, and the employer's position is that it may not allow a person to work in breach of their visa conditions or without a visa, which is an offence for the employer with civil penalties and, for a sponsor, adverse information that follows the business to every later application. The question the employer asks is therefore not whether the worker can start, but what visa the worker holds this morning and what it allows, read on VEVO rather than from the worker's recollection, and the VEVO guide covers the check. Everything below is that question answered for the three situations an employer meets.

The onshore worker on a bridging visa

A worker in Australia who lodges the 482 application here is granted a bridging visa with it, which comes into effect when the visa they hold expires and keeps them lawful until the 482 is decided, and the bridging visa carries work conditions that are, in the ordinary case, those of the visa the worker held when they applied. A worker who held a 485 graduate visa or an earlier 482 usually has unrestricted work rights on the bridging visa and may start in the nominated position when the previous visa ends, or earlier where that visa allowed it; a worker who held a student visa carries the student's hours limit while the course runs, which does not fit a full-time nominated position until the course is over; a worker who held a working holiday visa carries its conditions; and a worker who held a visitor visa or any visa without work rights has a bridging visa without work rights unless the Department has varied it on application, which it does on financial hardship and in some other circumstances. The employer reads the bridging visa's conditions on VEVO, reads when it comes into effect, and lets the worker start only inside what it allows; the bridging visa guide sets out each case and the section 48 bar that can sit behind an onshore application. Work done on the bridging visa within its conditions is lawful work for the business, on the business's ordinary terms, and the sponsored employment on the 482 starts on the grant.

The visitor who cannot work

A worker who is abroad when the 482 is lodged sometimes proposes to come to Australia on a visitor visa and start while the application is processed, and some employers agree to it because the role is urgent. A visitor visa carries a condition prohibiting work, and a person who starts in the nominated position on it is in breach from the first shift: the visitor visa can be cancelled for the breach, cancellation makes the worker unlawful and can bar them from being granted the 482 they applied for while they remain in Australia, the breach is declared in every later application, and the employer has allowed a person to work in breach of their visa, which is the employer's offence. A visitor may attend a meeting, see the premises, meet the team and sign the contract, none of which is work; a visitor who is rostered, who is paid for hours, who serves customers or produces the business's output is working, and the Department draws the line at whether the person is doing the job rather than at what the parties call it. A business that genuinely needs the worker on site before the grant, for a defined task, reads the 400 below; a business that needs the ongoing role filled waits, and the comparison guide shows what the wait is in each case: hiring from overseas against sponsoring someone here.

The offshore worker working remotely from their own country

A worker in their own country who does work for the Australian business from there, over a laptop, while the 482 is processed is not working in Australia, needs no Australian visa to do it, and breaches nothing in the Migration Act by doing it; the migration rules govern work in Australia and are silent on work abroad. What governs it is the law of the country the worker is in: whether the worker may work there, how the worker is engaged and paid, whether the Australian business is employing someone in that country with that country's tax, social security and employment law consequences, and whether the arrangement creates a presence for the business there, which an employment or tax adviser reads before the arrangement starts, and which the remote work guide approaches from the worker's side. From the migration side the arrangement is neither prohibited nor useful: the work is not employment on the 482, the salary paid for it is not the nominated salary, the time does not count toward anything, and the first obligation on the Australian side is the worker starting in the nominated position within 90 days of arriving on the visa, which the first-90-days guide covers. It is a sensible bridge for a role that can be done remotely and a business that has taken the foreign-law advice, and a trap where the business treats the remote start as the start of the sponsored employment, pays the Australian salary into a foreign account and discovers later that none of it counted.

What pre-grant work does not count for

• The 186 clock. The Temporary Residence Transition stream counts full-time employment with the sponsor in the nominated occupation while holding the 482. Work on a bridging visa, on any other visa, or from overseas before the grant is not time on the 482 and does not count, and the worker's two years begin on the grant.
• The nomination. The nominated position, salary and terms apply from the 482; what the worker is paid on a bridging visa or abroad is governed by the ordinary employment law of the place and does not satisfy or breach the sponsorship obligations, which attach when the worker becomes a sponsored visa holder.
• The 90-day start. Condition 8607 requires the holder to start in the nominated position within 90 days of arrival or grant; a worker already working on a bridging visa satisfies it on the grant, and a worker abroad satisfies it on arrival, and remote work before either does not.
• The visitor's breach. Work on a visitor visa is not cured by the later grant of the 482; the breach is on the record and the cancellation risk is real until the 482 is granted.

The 400 for an urgent short specialist task

The subclass 400 short stay specialist visa lets a person come to Australia for highly specialised work that is not ongoing and that an Australian cannot reasonably do, for up to three months in the ordinary case and six where the business shows a strong case, and it is usually decided in days to a few weeks on the employer's letter and the evidence of the task. A business that needs its incoming specialist on site now for a defined task, commissioning a machine, delivering a project phase, training the team on a system, can use it while the 482 runs, and the worker leaves at the end of the task or when the 482 is granted, with the 482 then taken up from outside Australia or, where the 400 allows it, onshore. It is not a way to start the ongoing role early: the 400 is refused where the work is in substance the ongoing position, the Department reads a 400 lodged beside a pending 482 for exactly that, and a 400 used as a stopgap invites refusal and questions about the genuineness of the 482's position. The 400 guide sets out where the line falls and what the letter must say.

What actually shortens the wait

Three things shorten the processing of a 482, and none of them is a phone call. The first is completeness: the Department's long processing times are the applications it has to write to, and an application lodged with every document, the health examinations completed through the Department's process before lodgement, the police certificates from every country in hand, the English result attached, the employment references in the required form and the skills assessment where one is required, is decided in the ordinary time, while an application that waits for a certificate from a slow country waits for the certificate. The second is the sponsor's standing: accredited sponsors' nominations and visas are processed with priority, and a business that sponsors regularly and qualifies for accreditation gains months on every application, which the accredited status guide covers. The third is the stream: the specialist stream has a stated priority processing target that the core stream does not, for the positions that meet its threshold. The processing time guide has the current times by stream, and a business planning a hire reads them before promising a start date to anyone.

What the business may ask of a worker before the grant

An employer may do a good deal with an incoming worker before the grant without anyone working: sign the employment contract, with the start date expressed as the later of the grant and the agreed date; complete the paperwork for payroll, superannuation and the tax file number declaration to be lodged on the start; have the worker attend an induction that is orientation rather than work, and read the policies; arrange the relocation, the accommodation and the flights; have the worker complete any training the business pays for that is genuinely training; and keep in contact. What the business may not do is have the worker produce its output, serve its customers, attend its roster or be paid for hours before a visa that allows it, however the arrangement is described, and it may not condition the sponsorship on the worker doing any of that. A worker on a bridging visa with work rights may do all of it and the work; a visitor may do all of it and none of the work; a worker abroad may do the paperwork and, with the foreign-law advice taken, the remote work.

The mistakes that cost the visa

• Starting a visitor. The commonest, and the one that cancels a visa and bars the 482.
• Trusting the worker's reading of the bridging visa. A worker who believes their bridging visa has full work rights because the 482 is lodged is often wrong; VEVO is read before the first shift.
• Exceeding the student's hours. A worker on a student-derived bridging visa who works full-time in the nominated position before the course ends is in breach, and the employer with them.
• Treating remote work as the start. The 186 clock, the nominated salary and the 90-day rule all run from the 482; a business that counts from the remote start has the dates wrong for the next three years.
• Using the 400 for the ongoing role. Refused, with questions attached to the 482.
• Letting a bridging visa lapse. A bridging visa tied to a withdrawn or refused application ends; a worker who keeps working after it does is unlawful, and the employer checks VEVO at every change.

The pre-grant checklist

1. Read the worker's current visa and its conditions on VEVO today, and the bridging visa's conditions and start date if one has been granted.
2. If the bridging visa allows the work, start within its limits; if it does not, do not start, and consider whether the conditions can be varied.
3. Never start a visitor; if the need is a defined short specialist task, read the 400 with advice.
4. For a worker abroad, take employment and tax advice before any remote arrangement, and treat it as a bridge, not the start.
5. Lodge a complete application, and if the business sponsors regularly, pursue accreditation.
6. Set the contract's start date at the later of the grant and the agreed date, and plan the 186 from the grant, not before.

General information only, current at October 2026; not advice on your own case, and not employment or tax advice, Australian or foreign. Sections 235 and 245AB to 245AK of the Migration Act 1958 (work in breach of a visa and allowing an unlawful non-citizen or a person in breach to work), the bridging visa provisions and conditions in Schedules 2 and 8 to the Migration Regulations 1994 including conditions 8101, 8105 and 8607, the subclass 400 and 482 criteria, the Temporary Residence Transition stream requirements for the subclass 186, and the Department’s published processing priorities, all as in force at the date above. Outcomes depend on the Department’s assessment of each application; no registered migration agent can guarantee a result (Code of Conduct, Migration Agents Regulations). Keshab Chapagain, MARN 1576536.