How Ben Duggan Went From Working Holiday to a Three-Year 482 Visa

I can plan years in advance now, as opposed to months. It's nice to have the visa loop closed in my head.

Ben Duggan

Management Accountant @ Crimson Education

Overview

Ben Duggan grew up in Dublin and stayed until he was 27, through university, a master's degree, and a graduate programme at Deloitte. In all that time he never had to think about a visa. Then, in January 2025, he landed in Sydney on a one-year working holiday visa, and the thinking started.

He joined Crimson Education's Sydney office as a management accountant and got on with building a life: a job he liked, a partner working as a vet, and a huge Irish community around him. He had no desire to move back to Ireland or Europe.

The catch was the calendar. A 417 working holiday visa lasts one year. His would expire in January 2026, and everything, sponsorship included, had to be sorted before then.

Challenge

A hard deadline, and one bad alternative

Ben's 417 expired in January 2026, and everything had to be lodged before it did. The only way to extend the visa itself was regional work: 88 days in hospitality, construction or farm work, at least 100 kilometres from a city, sorted by September to count. Ben had a full-time accounting job in Sydney. Three months of farm work was never part of the plan.

No plan B, and research that went nowhere

If sponsorship didn't come through, the plan was blunt: pack up the life he'd built in Sydney and find a job in London. His own research into self-sponsored options kept hitting misinformation, AI rabbit holes and advice that didn't apply to him, and friends had horror stories of immigration lawyers getting one thing wrong and clients losing their visas.

The Turning Point

When Ben joined Crimson, he was told Concord could take the visa off his plate. He kicked things off with Ganesh, Concord's migration agent, in the third week of December 2025, with the 417 due to expire within weeks.

Ganesh asked for five or six documents, there was a bit of back and forth on what was needed, and then the application was lodged before the January deadline. From first call to submission took about three weeks. "I didn't really have to do anything," Ben says. "Get everything to Ganesh, and boom, it was done."

Then came the wait, seven months of it, while the application sat with the Australian government. Ganesh forwarded every official notice as it arrived and kept Ben in the loop the whole way through. "It was nice to just be able to outsource everything to Concord."

The Outcome

The approval came through in late August 2026. Ben was walking back into his house after a morning run when he saw Ganesh's message on his phone. He told his parents in Dublin and his partner in Sydney. "We were happy."

The visa is valid for three years, and the biggest difference is in his head. On a working holiday visa, life gets planned in months. Now he can plan in years. The 88 days of farm work are permanently off the table, London is no longer the fallback, and the question that had been open since he landed is finally closed.

His partner's visa is the next one the household is waiting on. Beyond that, there's no plan to go anywhere. "I have no desire to move back to Ireland or Europe as of now," Ben says. "Australia is home for the foreseeable."

"I knew I was in safe hands. Ganesh and Concord are quite experienced, they know what they're doing. I wasn't really stressed at all, to be honest."