In Noosa, on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, Giulia Hoogenbosch keeps offering her clients the easy option. We can do this online, she tells them. We can do it over a call. And again and again, they say no. "I want to look at you, and I want you to explain it to me, and I want to be there," is how she sums up their answer.

It is a small moment, but it captures something larger about how Giulia (pronounced "Julia," the Italian spelling of her name) practices immigration law. In an industry racing to automate every form and follow-up, her clients keep voting for the person in the room. And in a sense, that is the whole story of how she built her firm, Go Access Law.

From a United Nations Dream to Immigration Law

Giulia did not set out to become an immigration lawyer. At 32, she describes her path to this point as "very unconventional." She studied a double degree in law and international relations, drawn less to courtrooms than to diplomacy, with a young dream of one day working inside the United Nations. That dream quietly faded. As she became more aware of how parts of the UN actually operated, she grew disillusioned, and she went looking for a different road.

That road ran straight through the Spanish-speaking world. She spent a few years on exchange in Spain, finishing her law degree abroad, before returning to Australia just as COVID arrived. Law itself had started to feel "a little bit dry" to her, and she was not even certain she wanted to practice. In Australia, new graduates must complete practical legal training before they can qualify, so with the country in lockdown, she reasoned, "what else are you going to do?"

A colleague from that training changed everything with a simple invitation: come get some experience at this immigration law firm. There was a catch. Giulia was about to move to Venezuela. Could she work from there? She also, as she puts it, "speak[s] Spanish, by the way." The answer was, essentially, let's see how it goes.

It went well. Supervised remotely by a practicing lawyer back home, she spent two years in Venezuela consulting with clients across Australia and around the world. Australian lawyers must work under supervision for two years before earning a full practicing certificate, and she earned hers from the other side of the planet.

Why Giulia Hoogenbosch Founded Go Access Law

When she returned to Australia, Giulia and a colleague decided to stop fitting themselves into someone else's system and build their own. They launched Go Access Law around August 2024.

The reason was simple. She kept seeing client needs going unmet. "I know the needs of my clients, I know the pain points of my clients," she says, "and I believe that I have that level of communication and expertise to be able to help solve those problems." The firm "hit the ground running," opening first in Melbourne, where she is originally from, and growing quickly enough to open a second office in Noosa, Queensland.

Looking back, she sounds slightly surprised by where she landed. "It wasn't that I instinctively made that choice," she reflects. "You sort of fall into it, and then one thing leads to another, and it's been brilliant so far. So I'm genuinely quite happy."

"We're All Migrants Out Here": The Go Access Law Difference

Ask Giulia what sets her firm apart, and the answer is not a process or a price. It is a worldview. "We're all migrants out here in Australia, basically, except for our indigenous population," she says. Both her grandfathers migrated, one from Italy and one from the Netherlands, which is where her decidedly un-Italian surname, Hoogenbosch, comes from. She has lived the migrant experience herself in Spain and in Venezuela.

That history shows up in who she serves. Roughly 99 percent of her clients speak Spanish, spanning the Latino community and clients from Spain. Speaking the language is only part of it. "It's not just speaking the language," she explains, "but it's understanding their culture, why they're migrating, getting into that headspace, and then helping them to feel super comfortable and guided and supported during this journey."

Her second principle is to strip out friction. She had watched other workplaces pile on "a whole lot of unnecessary steps," and she built Go Access Law to cut straight to the point. Much of her work centers on employer sponsorship: in Australia, an occupation on the government's skilled occupation list can open a path to a permanent visa, often with the help of a sponsoring employer. Giulia positions herself as the bridge between the two. She runs the first consultation with the visa applicant, then sits down with the employer to explain the process, answer questions, and gently make the case for sponsorship, before her firm manages the whole exchange between them.

Where Go Access Law's Clients Come From

The makeup of her client base shifts with the agreements Australia holds with each country. Right now, Argentinians make up the vast majority, followed by a strong contingent from Chile and Spain, with a scattering from Mexico, Uruguay, Peru, and Colombia. Those agreements shape the journey. Colombian clients, for example, cannot access a work and holiday visa and typically begin on a student visa, which sends them down a very different path from an Argentinian client.

How to Move to Australia: Be Armed With Information Early

For anyone dreaming of Australia from abroad, Giulia's advice is blunt and practical: "Be armed with your information from the beginning."

The mistake she sees most often is people arriving, spending three years building a life, and only then deciding they want residency, by which point they have to start the process from scratch. Had they spoken to her three years earlier, she could have mapped the whole pathway. For an Argentinian arriving on a work and holiday visa (which already requires some level of study), her guidance is to find work in an occupation on the skilled list, build genuine experience, and move toward sponsorship faster. For those whose occupation is not on the list, the move is to look at what qualifies, get the training and experience, and revisit sponsorship a year or so later.

Can Digital Nomads and Entrepreneurs Move to Australia?

For the self-employed and the location-independent, Giulia is honest about the difficulty, and personal about it too. "Apparently it's a bit tricky, and I say this with a heavy heart, because I was that for a long time too," she says.

There are still routes. She is fielding more and more consultations on self-sponsorship, where a person sets up an entity in Australia and, once it reaches a certain level of profitability after six to twelve months, can sponsor themselves (subject to rules such as employing a few Australians). A recently added occupation, content creator, is opening doors for clients in the digital nomad space. There is also independent sponsorship by invitation from a state or federal government. And, she adds with a smile, there is always the option of meeting true love, though that, she notes, "is another story."

From Work and Holiday Visa to Permanent Residency: The Australian Pathway

This is, as Giulia puts it, her "bread and butter." She walks through a typical trajectory. Someone arrives on a work and holiday visa for up to three years and works in a high-demand role, say landscape gardening, for two of those years. Through a process called Recognition of Prior Learning, her firm approaches an institution to convert that real, documented experience (proven through payslips, reference letters, and employer photos) into a formal qualification. With the certificate and a year or two of experience in hand, and often an employer eager to sponsor, the client moves onto a 482 employer-sponsored visa for two years, then transitions to a 186 permanent residency visa, which takes about a year to process.

Starting to finish, that route runs roughly five years. But someone who already holds the qualifications and experience from their home country can cut three or more years off that timeline, potentially reaching permanent residency in as little as a year.

How Long Does It Take to Get Australian Citizenship?

Once permanent residency is granted, the rule is four years of residence in Australia before applying for citizenship. Many of Giulia's clients are happy to stop at residency, sometimes because their home country does not allow dual citizenship. The main downside of staying a permanent resident, she notes, is the hassle of renewing that status if you spend too long outside the country. "Australia allows dual citizenship," she says, "but there are some countries that don't."

Where AI Fits in Immigration Law, and Where It Doesn't

Giulia is candid about technology's place in her work. The right tools, she says, have "saved me hundreds of hours or more," handling the heavy administrative lift so she can focus on people. She is equally candid about the limits. She has seen the technology make "really stupid" mistakes, like misciting a section of legislation, and she reviews everything before it leaves her desk. She also feels the friction of clients who second-guess hard-won legal advice because "ChatGPT says this."

What technology cannot do, she believes, is replace the moment her Noosa clients keep insisting on. "There still exists that level of human connection that people crave," she says. For now, the machine handles the paperwork. The reassurance still comes from her.

What's Next for Australian Immigration and Go Access Law

After a long stretch of tightening, especially a sharp cut to student visa quotas, Giulia is sensing a shift. In recent weeks she has had at least ten clients see student visas approved almost immediately, which she reads as an early sign that the system may be loosening for skilled people who genuinely want to stay.

She is just as energized about her own firm. "We are young, but we are mighty," she says, pointing to the new Queensland office and a growing roster of lawyers. What keeps her going is the part she is almost embarrassed to call corny. "Seriously, to give them choices," she says, "to give my clients choices of staying here if they want to, having the possibility to create a life here in Australia, because it gives them a lot more opportunity and lifestyle for them and their families."

It is a fitting mission for someone who fell into immigration law sideways, only to discover that every detour, the abandoned UN dream, the years in Spain and Venezuela, the second language, the migrant grandparents, had been preparing her for it all along.