CrozierFamily

Hi, yes I have seen the sheet, but I wasn't able to work out whether what the migration team are telling me at Deloitte is correct. It appears to be a bit all over the place. Hopefully will hear soon. Thanks.

Hi there. I lodged my application for our 186 visa (direct entry stream) back on 17th February and have as yet had no response or update on how the visa is progressing. Deloitte are dealing with my application and they are telling me that the department are still dealing with applications in early February, but I feel they have been telling me that for a while! Can anyone here who has recently had their application picked up and processed tell me when they made their application? I am not dealing with mine directly as it is all being handled by my employer, but it is taking much longer than I originally expected and I was really hoping it would be dealt with by Christmas!

We just moved to Mount Eliza a few weeks ago, love the place!

Hi there. You will need to be moving to an area in the zone for that School, if you don't live in the zone you are unlikely to get in. You can find details of the zone online. Other schools in the area like Kunyung are also great, you really cannot go wrong for a primary school in Mount Eliza.

I personally found HSBC to be a shambles. I applied for an account about 6 weeks ago, told them I was moving and needed everything sorted as soon as possible. After a few weeks of applying and going to their branch to verify my identity (I am an existing customer), I called to see how the app was going. Turns out they hadnt got to it yet and was still going nowhere. I chased it and it turned out the branch needed to sign something (they forgot), another week passed while they messed about. Eventually I got my account (6 weeks later). By the time I had opened my account with HSBC I had got bored with their service and opened and account with NAB in 4 days! My advice is stay away from HSBC. The worlds local bank my erse.

I am not quite sure how it would go if Boris ever became prime minister, but one things for sure, it would be entertaining. I agree with every word he said in the above speech. I have much more in common with people from English speaking lands than I do with other Europeans. I would much rather a Union with Australia, New Zealand and Canada than any European nation. Not that I am against European folks, I just don't feel as close to them as the nations above. I would never fancy living in other European places either, but would happily live in English speaking places.

I think if someone had their eyes on Syrian resources they would have been in there last year when they first had an excuse. I don't really like wars and I especially don't like wars that seem to be motivated for the wrong reasons (Iraq), however it does appear something needs to happen to help the civillian people in Syria who appear to be living in a terrible situation at the moment. If there really has been chemical attacks then personally I think that is a red line that is crossed and the UN needs to react. I hope whatever happens does so for the right reasons.

No. It says you must 'retain a permanent residential address in the UK for the account to remain open.' I am not going to have a permanent address in the UK and they are happy for it to remain open. The point I am making is that sometime banks have terms such as this in their T&Cs that are not enforced. Trust me on this, I do it for a living.

I bank with Santander and I called them a few days ago about changing my address, they are only to happy to change it to an Australian one, so I don't think that rule is enforced all the time. They told me they have no issue with me having an Australian address.

I have a sure fire way to win the lottery. Buy a ticket for every possible number combination. It will probably cost you more than you will win, but still, you won the lotto.

Hi I have recently managed to find a job in Australia and get sponsorship from the UK. I can tell you what I did, but there are no guarantees. I think the first thing I would say is that you have to be willing to be patient. When I set out to find a job I told myself that I would give it two years of trying and in the end it took just under a year to get an offer. Typically I got two offers in one week, jobs are like buses! My background is in financial services, mainly in product management and marketing. I knew I had no option to apply straight off for a permanent visa as my skills are not on the list. I identified my only chance to get to Australia was a 457 visa. I recognised this was not a guarantee of permanent residency by any means but accepted the risk that it was worth a shot, with the aim of going permanent if things work out with my employer. So advice part 1: Work out what your visa options are and accept the risks they pose. What you do for a living will guide your options to some extend, for example with me, most of the work I do would be found in either Melbourne or Sydney. I wouldnt really have the option of working in a rural area, so I narrowed my search for jobs to the two biggest cities. Advice number two: Identify the areas of the country you can realistically target to find a job. Once I had worked out the visa and the areas I could search I took a few routes to try and find out the appetite for my skills in Australia and to find out what I should expect from a salary perspective. I asked a few questions on forums and searched the web. I got a bit of info, but nothing majorly helpful. This is advice number 3: Work out whether you are in demand and find out whether what you will be getting paid is in line with your expectations. Having failed to answer the above questions I decided to do two things. Firstly I decided to identify people in my network who knew someone in Australia who might be able to help me. Secondly I tried to find the specialist recruitment agencies that recruit people with my skills. This is advice number 4: Work your network. Everyone knows someone in Australia who can help you if you look hard enough. I managed to find someone through a friend of my Mums who I last saw when I was a kid, who just so happened to have married someone who used to work for a bank, he gave me a name of someone in a bank who worked in HR. I contacted the HR guy and he helped me out a bit. Most importantly he gave me details of recruitment agencies to speak to and promised to keep me in mind for jobs. In addition to the above I searched the web for specialist agencies to register with and contact. My strategy here was to search on Seek and Linkedin and find the agencies that were advertising roles in my general profession. My thinking is that they may not be advertising the exact role for you, but they will be most likely to have some interest in your skills. After emailing quite a few agencies I got a fair number of responses and spoke to a brave few consultants on the phone. Many of whom talk tripe, some of whom are quite useful. However, I had managed to build a small network in Australia of some people who might be able to help me in the future. I set a reminder in my calender and mailed each of them every 4 weeks, just to remind them that I was still here and looking for the right opportunity. Some of them replied every month, some I never heard from after the first telephone chat. I sent these emails every 4 weeks for a year. They were probably sick of me at the end. Advice number 5: Never give up, don't let them forget you. Having built up a network, I decided I would also try and apply to roles directly. I thought this was more of a long shot, but I gave it a go. I checked Seek every day, and Linkedin jobs, and the job sites of the main employers I had identified. When I saw a direct role I applied for it. Or if one of the people I knew in my network had mentioned they had links to this employer I contacted them and asked them if they would see if they would consider me. Furthermore if I saw someone I had been in touch with was advertising something and hadnt emailed me about it, I emailed them and asked them whether they would consider an international applicant. Any new contacts I picked up were added to the 4 weekly email! So in the end I repeated the above process for a year. I checked Seek and Linkedin every day and I found new people to contact all the time. I got a few bites from people, even had a couple of interviews over Skype, but for various reasons they did not work out. I even got offered a good role, but it didnt feel right to me so I passed it up. I kept on searching and emailing, knowing that sooner or later something would happen. By the time I did find a job I had sent over 3000 emails, had a network of over 100 people in Australia who might be able to help and applied for I dont know how many jobs (a few a day at least, some with very boring application forms). I did all of my interviews via Skype, which made things easier even than an interview in the UK! Funnily enough the recruitment agent who found me the job was the person that my mums, friends, husbands. contact in HR gave me details of! The other job I was offered I applied to directly by calling the recruiting manager on their mobile (which I found on google) about 4 hours after my second child was born and I was in a hospital still awake in the middle of the night! So to be honest it was a total pain in the neck, it took ages and it was soul destroying at times. But in the end I found a job. Totally worth every email and late night interview when I should have been sleeping. I think in summary my advice is to plan well, know your market, work and build your network, dont just accept the first thing you get and never give up. Hope this helps.

It seems to be a bit random with the time it takes to get a 457 through. Personally I was one of the lucky ones in that it only took a week to go through, but I have seen others on this forum waiting a very long time. I am not sure if the speed of processing is helped by who you are being employed by (I am going to work for a big health insurer) or the migration agent you use or what, but it does appear there is a very wide range of timings if this forum is anything to go by.

I would not expect Australian (or any kind of foreign accounts) would be something a UK lender would be overly interested in as they do not demonstrate any kind of future earning in the UK. For a number of reasons it is unlikely a lender here would have any real interest in foreign books, unless the foreign business is still trading and generating income of some kind. What the lender would be more interested in is forward looking income, so any solid contracts of future income etc. There will be companies out there that can help. But you will pay a high price for being a very high risk in the eyes of a lender.

Hi there In the good old (or not so good) days you could probably have self certified and been fine, but that is no longer an option post credit crunch. You might want to have a quick read of this from Which and maybe give them a call. http://www.whichmortgageadvisers.co.uk/specialist/self-employed-mortgages/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=generic_e&utm_content=self_cert_e&utm_term=self_certification_mortgages&cmp=ppc_google I would agree with other posters that because you have no books to show your previous income, you will be considered a higher risk than an established self employed person. However, the risk decision will also depend on what your profession is and whether you can demonstrate steady income. I would imagine if for example you are a project manager or an IT contractor with a contract for work for decent length of time that could help. Having a chunky deposit can't help either, because if the you know what hits the fan at least the lender can sell your property and recover their funds. You will be paying a premium until you can get a few years books though. That unfortunately for you is a certainty in this market.

House prices in Belfast may be low, but so are comparable wages. I had a call from a recruitment agency a month or so ago asking if I would be interested in a job back in Belfast. It was a product manager role for a bank, and the salary was £23k. The same role here in sunny Swindon would pay a minimum of £45k. Unfortunately Belfast has fallen apart on me since I left 6 years ago. It is sad to see how bad it has got over there. Great place to live all the same, but if you need to find a job paying decent money it's not so good. It has so many highly qualified people looking for a very small number of jobs the employers are getting away with paying very low salaries. That said, if you have a few quid knocking about, it is a great place to pick up a bargain at the moment, the rental yields are probably the best in any area in the UK based on purchase costs.

Is it just me that gets frustrated reading posts like this, when you have someone coming from another country immediately looking for 'benefits'? Winds me up!

Thanks folks. I have a travel adaptor that switches from being Australian or American so hopefully that will do the job.

Hi folks I have read on the Singapore Airlines website that their seats have electrical points for charging things like laptops. I was wondering if anyone who has flown on the big Airbus knows if you can plug a standard UK plug straight into the seat, or do you need an adaptor of some kind? Thanks in advance.

You can cut a standard sized sim down to fit the iPhone, but that said I bought a sim for Oz from eBay for my iPhone and it fits fine anyway. You should be fine as long as the phone is unlocked.

Hi. We used GB Liners for our move from Northern Ireland to England about 6 years ago and I would not have any complaints about them. I thought they were very professional and did a good job.

Hi. That sounds quite a lot for one dog. We are about to ship two dogs with Golden Arrow for £4300 all in (including two sets of quarantine fees). Our dogs are a Cocker Spaniel and a Schnauzer. They will be going from Manchester to Melbourne. I guess part of this depends on how long your dog needs to stay in quarantine, ours are only going to be in for 30 days as they have had their jabs etc. I think £4,500 sounds a lot for 1 dog to be honest.

We bank with HSBC in the UK and have opened our accounts in Australia with them here. The benefit of this is that you get your cards sent the UK and they are able to vouch for your credit record. They would be the only bank in the UK to offer that service, so it is a decent proposition. All you do is apply on the phone and go to a branch with your ID. It was very easy.

I don't think a 457 holder (I am one) can argue about this change to the rules. You are always taking a chance on a visa like a 457 so you have to take the rough with the smooth. I agree 100% with the point that if you are only here for a short time, you should pay your way towards things Australians have paid for over a lifetime. I hope to get a PR as I want to stay forever, and when I do, and the commitment of a long term stay is made I will then feel entitled to the same kind of support an Australian is entitled to. It is unfortunate that some folks will suffer as a result of this change, but I think we are all warned quite clearly before you get on a 457 visa that it is a risk in a number of ways. I personally thank myself very lucky that Australians have been willing to allow me to come to their country. I think it is up to me to do something to pay that back, not the other way round.

Hi I am not really trying to argue with you, but you cannot really claim that we are in recession, because all of the data says we are not. This data is widely accepted by industry, our government, international governments and various highly qualified people who know what they are talking about. It may be the case that many people still feel like we are in recession because it is not like the economy is booming, or that the good times are firmly back again, but from a factual perspective it is 100% true that at this moment in time our economy is not in recession. It could dip back in again I grant you, but at the moment all of the most significant economic indicators are suggesting that we are at the start of a recovery period and that we are most certainly not in a technical position of recession (as your definition would explain). So maybe it does feel like recession is still here to some, but at a macro level the economy is not in recession.

Get your facts right? Are you having a laugh? The Labour government are squarely to blame for the majority of the issues we now face in regards to the illegal immigrant problem we have in the UK. Blaming it on Thatcher is laughable. I am guessing though that in your mind Thatcher is to blame for most of the worlds ills. I am sure there was to some degree a level of illegal immigration when Thatcher was in power, probably was the case before she came to power too, but nothing like the open borders ask no questions policy of the Labour government. She also has not been in power for more than two decades, so if she did start it surely Labour should have done something about it rather than letting it get out of control and just calling people racist if they questioned any element of immigration policy. If there is a party in Australia who are against people like me coming to their country then I respect their right to their opinion. I personally have nothing against immigrants who come here legally. I do however have something against the government policy that failed to control immigration properly, the people who brand anyone with a different view to their own as racists and the people who come here against the rules. It would also appear that my opinion is relatively mainstream given the recent protest votes towards parties such as UKIP, which have forced the more mainstream parties to wake up to views of the voting public on the subject (and that of EU membership).