Helping clients with visa applications may sit a little outside your normal day-to-day work. Every now and then, however, a client may ask you to do just that.
At first sight it doesn’t seem very different from completing any other online form. Your client sends over the information, you draft the application, upload the documents and help keep everything organised.
The difference is in the information you’re likely to be handling. Instead of diary appointments and invoices, you could be dealing with passports, birth certificates, children’s information, bank statements and other documents that people would be very upset to lose or see in the wrong hands. If there is a mistake, the consequences can be much greater than having to rebook a meeting or resend an invoice.
None of this is a reason to avoid helping clients with visa applications. It is simply a reminder that this is one of those jobs where it pays to pause for a few minutes before you begin.
A sensible workflow will help you decide what you are going to do, what your client needs to do and how you are both going to work together.
What are you being asked to do?
As a Virtual Assistant, you are there to help with the administration of the application. You are not there to advise your client which visa they should apply for or whether they are likely to qualify. Those are specialist questions for an immigration adviser.
Your role is to help your client through the administrative process once they have decided what they are applying for. That might include collecting information, preparing a draft application, organising supporting documents and submitting the application once everything has been checked and approved.
Keeping that distinction clear protects both you and your client. If the wrong visa is chosen or incorrect advice is given, the consequences can be serious. You are probably not insured to give advice on visa eligibility and you don’t want an irate client trapped at immigration telling you this is all your fault! That is exactly why it is important to keep your role firmly on the administrative side of the process – and to make sure your client knows this before you get going.
Check your professional indemnity and cyber insurance policies
The stakes are high when this goes wrong, so make sure you understand what your insurance covers you for and stay within scope of your insurance at all times.
If you are not sure contact your broker/underwriter and tell them what workflow you have in mind and get them to confirm this is covered as admin.
Who is paying you to do it?
Before you start collecting information, take a moment to establish exactly who the application is for.
Sometimes the answer is straightforward. Your client is applying for their own visa and you’re simply helping them with the administration. In other cases, the picture is rather more complicated. You could be helping an employer recruit someone from overseas, preparing applications for an employee’s family members or supporting a business owner with applications for several members of staff.
The reason this matters is that the person instructing you is not always the person whose information you will be handling. As soon as you are dealing with passports, identity documents, financial information or personal details belonging to other people, it is worth considering whether your existing processes are still appropriate and whether everyone understands how their information will be used.
Being clear about who you are acting for at the outset will also make the rest of the process much easier. You’ll know who can give you instructions, who should be checking the information before anything is submitted and who needs to approve the final application.
What information will you be handling?
Many Virtual Assistants spend their days working with invoices, diary appointments and general business correspondence. A visa application is often very different. Depending on the application, you could be handling passports, birth and marriage certificates, bank statements, employment records, qualifications, photographs and, in some cases, information about children or an individual’s health.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take on this type of work. It simply means you need to recognise that you may be handling some of the most sensitive and high risk personal information your client owns. Before you ask your client to send anything, think about how those documents are going to reach you, where they will be stored while you’re working on the application and how they will be disposed of once they are no longer needed.
The easiest time to decide how you’re going to protect that information is before the first document is sent, not afterwards.
How will documents be shared?
If your client has an existing way of securing high risk information you should get them to share their policies/methods with you and follow those. But all too often the busy client has nothing – just a job that needs doing and they are seeing it as exactly the same process you use for general administration.
Before your client sends a single document, decide where those documents are going to be stored and how everyone involved will access them.
Ideally, documents should be exchanged through an encrypted workspace rather than by email. That might be a secure SharePoint site, Dropbox, WhatsApp, Signal, or another encrypted platform that is appropriate for the task. The important point is not which system you choose, but that everyone uses the same one.
Wherever possible, work from that secure space rather than downloading copies onto your own computer. The fewer copies of sensitive documents that exist, the easier they are to manage and the lower the risk of them ending up somewhere they shouldn’t.
Access should also be restricted so that only the people who genuinely need to see the information can do so. If you have members of your own team or your client has employees who are not involved in the application, they should not automatically have access simply because they can see the folder.
Where there is more than one visa applicant, consider creating a separate folder for each person and only giving them access to their own information. As well as helping to protect everyone’s privacy, this also makes it much easier for each applicant to review their own documents before the application is submitted.
Check you’re using the correct website
Before you start entering information or uploading documents, take a few moments to check that you are using the correct website.
Visa scams are nothing new. Criminals know that people applying for visas are often working to tight deadlines and may be unfamiliar with the process. Fake websites, sponsored adverts and phishing emails can all be used to persuade applicants to enter personal information or make payments through unofficial channels.
Never assume that a link is genuine simply because it was sent to you by your client or appeared in a search engine.
Start by checking you are on the official government website for the country concerned and then double-check that the website address is exactly what you’d expect to see.
For example, UK Government websites use the .gov.uk domain. In the United States, official federal government websites use .gov. Other countries have their own official government domains, so take a moment to confirm what you should be looking for before you begin.
As an additional safeguard, I also use Malwarebytes Browser Guard, which warns me about known malicious or fraudulent websites. No security tool can guarantee that every dangerous site will be identified, but an extra layer of protection makes good sense when you’re handling highly sensitive personal information.
Spending a minute checking that you are on the right website is far easier than trying to deal with the consequences of entering confidential information into the wrong one.
Prepare the draft application
Work methodically through the application using the information and documents your client has provided. If information is missing, incomplete or unclear, stop and ask rather than making assumptions or trying to fill in the gaps yourself. It is far easier to resolve a query before the application is completed than after it has been submitted.
As you work through the application, you may notice obvious discrepancies, such as names that are spelt differently on different documents or dates that do not appear to match. It is perfectly reasonable to draw these to your client’s attention, but it is not your role to decide which information is correct. Ask your client or the applicant to clarify the position before you continue. Get confirmation in writing. Relying on phone records can be tricky at this stage.
Remember that you are preparing a draft application, not making decisions on your client’s behalf. The choice of visa category, the information provided and the supporting documents remain the responsibility of your client and, where appropriate, the visa applicant.
As you complete each section, keep the draft application and the supporting documents together in the secure workspace so that they are ready for review. A well-organised draft makes the review process much quicker and reduces the risk of documents being overlooked before the application is submitted.
If you have checklists for a particular application, If you have a checklist for a particular application, keeping a copy there can be helpful to everyone involved.
Agree the review and sign-off process
Before the application is submitted, make sure everyone involved understands what needs to happen next.
Place the draft application together with the supporting documents in the secure workspace, using the access rights you agreed earlier. Each applicant should, wherever possible, have access to review the information that relates to them, while the person responsible for authorising the submission should be able to review the complete application.
Ask the reviewer to check that the proposed visa category is the one they have chosen or been advised to apply for, that the application accurately reflects their circumstances and that the supporting documents are complete and relate to the application being made. Remind them that, once the application has been submitted, correcting errors or making changes may be difficult or, in some cases, impossible.
Your role is to prepare the application for review, not to decide whether the information is correct or whether the applicant has selected the appropriate visa. The responsibility for those decisions remains with the applicant or the person authorised to make them.
Once the reviewer is satisfied, there should be a clear indication within your agreed process that the application has moved from Draft to Approved for Submission.
Keeping a record of who approved the application and when they gave that approval provides a clear audit trail and helps avoid misunderstandings later.
How will payment be made?
Visa applications can involve substantial fees, particularly where there are several applicants or additional charges for priority services, appointments or biometric enrolment. It is therefore worth agreeing the payment process before you begin the application, rather than trying to make decisions when you reach the payment screen.
Think carefully before using your own business or personal credit card to pay a client’s application fees. You could find yourself funding a significant expense while waiting to be reimbursed, or trying to recover the money if something goes wrong.
If you need to make payments on behalf of clients, take the time to develop a secure process that protects both you and your client. Our article, Do You Give Your VA Your Credit Card Details?, looks at some of the options available and the issues you and your client should consider before agreeing to handle client payments.
Finally, check whether your professional indemnity insurance covers this type of work. Some visa application processes require the person submitting the application to make declarations or accept responsibilities as part of the submission process. Before offering visa application support as a service, make sure you understand exactly what you are being asked to do and that your insurance provides appropriate cover.
Entering client payment details adds another layer of risk, so asking clients simply to share their card details with you is rarely the best approach.
Review your own documentation
Once you have sketched out a workflow that works for both you and your client, take a few minutes to review your own business documentation.
If you are helping an individual client with a visa application, consider whether your Data Privacy Policy should refer to this type of work, particularly when it comes to retaining documents (data retention periods) . Think about how long you intend to keep the application and supporting documents once the work has been completed. The answer may be different if this is a one-off application than if you expect to support the same client with future visa applications. You may even decide to keep a diary reminder so you can contact your client before their passport expires or when they are likely to need further assistance.
If you are providing visa application support for a business, particularly where you are handling applications for employees, your arrangements should also be reflected in your Data Processing Agreement or Data Processing Form. There is no need to repeat your entire workflow within those documents. Instead, they can refer to your documented procedures so that both parties are clear about how the work will be carried out.
Finally, review your own process documentation to make sure it accurately reflects the service you are providing. Unless you are specifically qualified, insured and engaged to do so, your procedures should make it clear that you are not responsible for selecting the appropriate visa, verifying the identity of the applicant, confirming the accuracy of the information provided or deciding whether an individual qualifies for a particular visa.
Your role is to provide administrative support within an agreed workflow, leaving those decisions to the applicant and any specialist advisers they choose to instruct.
