Leanne Stevens

Hi Ceebs-x, I'm the director of Emergico, thanks for your comments, it is good to hear them and have a chance to respond. I can't look up to see your file without your proper name but if you want to PM me or email me, leanne@emergico.com I am happy to investigate. As others have said, it is very difficult at the moment to provide precise advice to anyone when most States are still closed for skilled migration; we are emerging from COVID and everything in migration is continually changing. In an initial consultation we can look at your situation and provide general advice, but of course that might change the following week, if you are not going ahead straight away. We would usually follow the initial conversation up with some factsheets about skilled migration, you should have received these, if not I can easily re-send to you. Due to the changes in the MARA Code of Conduct earlier this year, all registered migration agents are prevented from continuing to converse with a prospective client without a formal service agreement in place, this is for the protection of both clients and migration agents. I am not sure when you had your consultation, but maybe that was the case. If you do send me your details, I will take a look to see if there is any more current information we can send you which may assist with your queries. Regards Leanne Stevens ASM MARN 1171279.

That sounds like a tricky situation. There are probably lots of employment law issues here which you'd need to discuss with a specialist in that area. From a visa perspective, if you are on a 457 with an approved role description and occupation, and your employer decides to change your duties, they need to notify the Department and perhaps lodge a new nomination. The employer's other alternative I guess would be to make your position redundant, which would mean you'd have to look for a new employer.

The 173 visa is an offshore one. So it will not have an associated bridging visa. The 173 is associated with the 143. You might consider the 864.

Hi KangaKit, unfortunately I don't think this will be possible for you. A child can be a member of the family unit up to 23; as long as they are dependent. Once your visa is granted, you could only assist him through family sponsorship if you live in a regional area and he has an occupation which is available on a list of in-demand occupations.

Hi Sonia, I'm a bit confused by your post. You are using an agent, and think you are being overcharged, but want to do it yourself? Yes, there are lodgement charges to be paid for the skills assessment (around $500 - 550 for ACS Skills Assessment) and visa ($3600 if you are the only applicant), and if you are using an agent they will also charge a professional fee for their time and experience. I don't think any agent here can advise you how to avoid rejection on the basis of an experience letter, the whole process is a little more complicated than that.

There's no reason you have to lodge an application against an invitation. If you are concerned that the error is significant the most conservative thing to do would be lodge a new EOI and hope to be issued another invitation. You can have as many EOI's in the system at the same time as you like.

Hi, normally you would do health declarations and medicals after the visa is actually lodged.

Hi Meagan, you are probly talking more about Sponsored Migration, the 187 visa requires you to be in a regional area; and for your employer to be employing you full time at a market rate of salary. So, casual or part time work would not meet the requirements. If you'd like to discuss your eligibility please don't hesitate to contact me, as there would be quite a few things that need to be looked at before anyone could assess whether your proposed employment might work for a visa.

You're right, the visa has to be lodged first before the Department will look at the medical results, even though you can actually undertake the medicals before the visa is lodged.

Hi Mick - welcome to the complexities of online partner visas! Under the current system, the Sponsorship form cannot be completed until the Visa application is completed, lodged and paid for. So I suspect that's the reasn she is having trouble. Just concentrate on the Visa first.

Hi Newgirl, you might be eligible to apply for PR through the "Direct Entry" stream which does not require you to have worked for your employer for 2 years on a 457 visa. There are however additioal requirements - a skills assessment may be needed; and postgraduate work experience of 3 years also may be needed, depending on the type of visa. Alternatively there's no reason you can't go down the route of skilled migration (independent or state sponsored) if you are eligible.

I'd be getting a migration agent to assess your eligibility. If you've been working for the business the whole time, and the overseas trips were directly relevant to your nominated occupation, and you were paid your salary while away, it's likely they would be counted as time worked for this purpose. However these situations are assessed on an individual basis.

Can I ask who has told you this?

The occupation of Medical Administrator is Skill Level 1 and VETASSESS Band A, which means you need a highly relevant degree and at least one year of postgraduate work experience; for a chance of a skills assessment. It's a position which would normally be in charge of a health facility such as a Director of Medical Services or a Director of Nursing. I suspect the work you may have been doing could be more along the lines of administrative support in the medical industry, is that correct? I don't believe the course you mention would give you appropriate qualifications for being a medical administrator as per the ANZSCO definition.

You could consider the eVisitor visa under the Business Visitor stream - this would not allow him to work but would permit "business visitor activities" which could include attending conferences, meeting with prospective employers, visiting workplaces etc. But he would need to be careful that he was not doing anything that was considered work.

Just a clarification on my comments above- I've just been through some previous invitation rounds and I can see that in some recent (but not all) rounds they have actually invited people for the 489 Family Sponsored visa with 60 points. And one of my RMA's has also just received an invitation for 489 FS only yesterday, for a client with 60 points. The numbers of invited 489 visas has increased considerably too, and they have allocated 150 in the current round - whereas last year it was down to 5 per round. On this basis, if you can meet the requirements of the skills assessment and other qualifiers it sound as if it's worth lodging your EOI with 60 points.

Can you not claim points for work in your occupation (between 3-5 years will give you 5 points)? Many States are currently sponsoring Social Workers, but many of them require two years minimum work experience. For family sponsorship, 65 is the minimum point score for an invitation and has been for several years. If you have no work experience you would need to check as to whether you would be able to obtain the AASW skills assessment.

Debbie the finer details of the new "5 year temporary sponsored parent vsisa" have not been worked out and the Department of Immigration and Border Protection has issued a Discussion Paper and called for public comments on it. If you have lodged a 143 you should already be able to get a 5 year validity Tourist Visa which has a maximum stay of 12 months in any 18. So, it would alllow you to enter Australia and stay with your children for up to 12 months without leaving. You would need to leave the country for grant of the visa anyway. No work is possible on this tourist visa. And, should your 12 months expire before the visa is processed (as I don't know how long ago you lodged it) you'd need to leave the country and wait for processing.

By rights you should not need a USA police clearance; because your residence there was more than 10 years ago. Unless you have something to declare, in which case they will require the clearance no matter how long ago it was.

That's pretty appalling Westly. The "Find an Agent" section is extremely sensitive and even an extra space put in after a person's name will return an invalid result. I also had a client politely question me as to whether I was actually registered as she tried to search on my name and nothing came up. Turns out she had put my two names in the wrong order.

That's pretty appalling. The "Find an Agent" section of the MARA website is extremely syntax sensitive I have found, even an extra space after a persons name will return an invalid result. I also had a client contact me and politely suggest that she could not find evidence of my registration on the MARA website when she checked - turned out she was searching on my names in the wrong order.

I'd agree with the above agents - the fee is low for an agent to completely manage a partner visa.

Hi Joobles - it will need to be declared and you'll need to provide some information about it - what was the record for; his rehabilitation, behaviour since, character references etc. It may mean the visa is referred to the VACCU ("Character Unit") for additional checks. Similar to medicals, every case is decided on its own merits and it's very hard to say whether it will cause a problem.

It's a difficult one; we are noticing across the board that 457 visas are becoming increasingly scrutinied and wait times are increasing for everyone. Your boss could perhaps email the Department and ask for a follow up on the case if they haven't heard anything since June as your case does appear to be outside standard published proccessing times.

Hi Unzippy, if you are going to appoint an agent to help with your application you should probably weigh up a range of factors which are important to you, such as ease of communication, experience with your kind of visa, and so on. My company is based in both Australia and the UK and we always work out what will be the best way to service our clients and allocate the case accordingly to either a UK or an Australian based agent. With any visa, you can of course go it alone, the decision you make would factor in how comfortable you are with managing the process yourself; and whether you are equipped to deal with any emergent issues, or law changes, which come up while doing your application. Most agents that I know of don't offer a service to just check your lodged documents, rather, if they are going to accept the responsibility that comes with properly managing someone's legal process, they manage it from the ground up, which means they fully understand your situation and this minimises the chance of missing something critical to the case that could otherwise be overlooked. In other words; it's not just a matter of filling in a form; sometimes it's what you DON'T put in a form that causes problems.