Hi Jayne
You cannot get a State Sponsored visa without a skills assessment. You have to send proof of the successful skills test with the visa application, so the skills test must be done first.
With a successful skills test under his belt, OH may be able to persiade an employer to sponsor him for immediate
PR under an ENS subclass 121 visa. Please see here:
Employer Nomination Scheme (Subclass 121/856)
Having said that, most employers who are willing to sponsor a migrant are willing because they need the worker quickly. Rightly or wrongly, they believe that using a temporary subclass 457 employer-sponsored visa will be quicker in the short term, so there tends to be a term in the Contract of employment that the employer will do his part for an onshore ENS visa (subclass 856) within 3 months of the employee starting work in Oz.
But without the skills assessment, the worker would have to spend 2 years on the 457 visa before
PR would become an option.
With regard to the $100,000, the deal was that one could get an extra 5 points by depositing $100,000 with the relevant State Treasury for 12 months. Then there was a scandal out in Oz towards the end of last year. A bent banker was producing illushttp://www.gomatilda.com/news/article.cfm?articleid=434http://www.gomatilda.com/news/article.cfm?articleid=434ions of the $100,000 but it was some kind of banking fraud.
That panicked all the State Treasuries so they all withdrew from the scheme. The MIA (Governing body for Registered Migration Agents) has been talking with DIAC to see whether it is possible for the money to be invested with the Federal Treasury (ie the central one) in some way.
Please see these articles by Alan Collett of Go Matilda:
Go Matilda - Your Gateway to Australia - News
Go Matilda - Your Gateway to Australia - News
Hope this might help. If they bring back the $100K investment, you could maybe use the equity from your house for that bit and rent for a year till the $100K is returned?
My impression is that the Govt does want to bring this back - they are merely trying to work out how to do that without the various States having to be involved, I think.
Have a word with Go Matilda in Southampton I would suggest:
Go Matilda - Your Gateway to Australia - Contact and Feedback
They don't charge for 10 -15 minutes on the phone and could explain your different options much better than I can. I'm not a Migration Agent. They are.
Best wishes
Gill
I do want to sell up and ship out, but not to somewhere I feel would be detrimental to my well-being !!
