Hi ss23
This is what Alan Collett wrote to you on 24 November 2007 - less than two months ago.
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I think you have a challenge on your hands, because your OH will be required to demonstrate a "skills transition" to the satisfaction of Trades Recognition Australia if he is to secure the required skills assessment classification, which is a threshold requirement for a general skilled visa.
TRA's Uniform Assessment Criteria are relevant here:
http://www.workplace.gov.au/NR/rdonl...tember2007.pdf
The removal of TRA's Skills Pathway D in September adds another problem to your securing the TRA classification. This Pathway allowed for the recognition of skills acquired "on the tools".
I recommend you have a chat with two or three recommended agents to explore this more fully. Feel able to have a chat with my migration agent Stephen Dickson as well (T 00 61 3 9935 2929 - Melbourne, which is +11 hours from the UK => telephone after 10pm in the evening UK time which is 9am the following day here).
If the skills assessment hurdle is a real problem you may then want to look at securing an employer sponsorship. So long as the employer is happy to look at sponsoring you for a visa under long term temporary subclass number 457, or (if in "regional Australia) a permanent residency visa under the Regional Sponsored Migration Scheme you may have a means of making the move.
In this latter regard see also:
Find a Job in Oz
Hope this helps - good luck!
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Managing Director, Go Matilda,
Go Matilda - Your Gateway to Australia - Visa, Tax and Financial Planning for Australia
Registered Migration Agent Number 0102534 and Chartered Accountant (England & Wales, and Australia)
Offices in the UK and in Australia
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As I understand if from your threads, OH now works full time as a plasterer but he learned his trade in his spare time, from a friend, so he does not have any formal qualifications in this field, nor did he complete a formal apprenticeship in the traditional sense.
It seems to me that your options are as follows:
1. Hubby goes to college in the UK and gets some formal qualifications and experience that would bring him within the ambit of Pathway B; or
2. You take an almighty financial risk by taking yourselves and your children off to Australia on a student visa and just hope that whatever training course OH (or you) might undertake there will still be on the MODL by the time it comes to seeking permanent migration, that the legislation does not alter in a way that would leave you in the lurch and so on; or
3. You find an employer who is willing to employ hubby as a plasterer either on a 457 visa to start with (most likely) or maybe via an RSMS visa if the employer and the job happen to be in regional Australia.
Hubby would not need a skills assessment in order to be eligible for either of these visas. If he were on a 457 visa for 2 years, he would be able to upgrade to an ENS visa or an RSMS visa afterwards as long as he can get the necessary sponsorship.
Personally I don't see where Pathway C might be relevant to this.
It is less than two months since Alan Collett first suggested that you should look for employer sponsorship. That is nowhere near long enough in which to give yourselves a reasonable chance of finding such an employer - especially since all notions of work closed down for nearly 3 weeks over Christmas and New Year and many, many Australian employers are on holiday throughout January.
Most of the people who have been successful in securing employer nomination and sponsorship will tell you that they spent literally hundreds of hours scouring the Web, finding possible leads and despatching CVs. Mostly they will tell you that they sent 50-100 e-mails and had maybe only 3 responses, out of which only one eventually metamorphosed into a visa.
Trying to get the sponsorship is
MUCH harder graft than you imagine, lassie. It requires solid, sustained and relentless effort. On your particular set of facts, there simply
isn't a kwik-fix solution. Any Agent who tries to tell you that there is one is a False Messiah, I strongly suspect.
Don't be seduced by the "no visa = full refund of fees" promise either. Unless the Contract is governed by English Law you wouldn't even be able to sue in the Small Claims Court in the event that your cash were not returned promptly and anyway these deals always
exclude a refund of fees paid to third parties such as the TRA and DIAC. It is perfectly possible for 2 parties to enter into a written contract in the UK but to agree in it that the agreement will be governed by the law of Timbuctoo. Which is not a lot of use if you ever need to sue on it.
For your own sakes, please, please be extremely careful about how you proceed.
Best wishes
Gill
