lothar

The options I know of: * If applying for a Skilled Migration Points Tested Visa like the 189 and 190s (there are some more I think), you can claim 5 points for having a relative to sponsor you. * If he is your only close family (ie Parents passed away or are also in Aus) and you do not have any other siblings outside of Aus he can sponsor you for a "Remaining Relative Visa) this is the description: Those who can apply under the Remaining Relative category are people who are the brother, sister or child (or step relative to the same degree) of a person in Australia who, if they did not migrate to Australia, would otherwise be left on their own overseas.

Hey, We applied on 6 December with all our documents hoping on a direct grant. Not heard anything yet. I am hoping/expecting to hear something near the end of March. From the general trend it looks like its about 3months from submission/adding documents to hearing from CO. Of course this is case by case and pure speculation so anything could happen.

I am not familiar with ACS so can't help here. I think they can make recommendations to you about which role on the list you apply for based on your degree and experience. 70 should be enough under most occupations. But you need to be very sure you can claim 70 before putting in the EOI. If you put in the EOI and claim 70 puts they will reject your Visa application and at this point you would have paid around AUD4000. Sorry I can't be of more help as I am not familiar with the occupation and assessors you will need. It might be worth while getting a free comprehensive assessment from an aganet, and they will give you the best options.

I'd rip that agent a new one. A lot of agents don't take cases on at 60 points. Saying that though you still have a good chance as you have avenues where you can gain points.

Yep, my wife was pregnant twice in the past 8 years, but got 8 years experience signed off. One has to look at it like this: You are still employed while on maternity leave, it would be MASSIVELY unfair and discriminating to working woman looking to have families if they didn't count that time as experience.

In my opinion, getting those 10 points for English would sort you out. Worth looking into.

I don't think it is pro rata, but yes please check this out. Some things to consider, if you are starting at 60 points: ENGLISH TEST * Improving your english score, from 7 to 8, would add 10 points, taking you up to 70 points. This is enough points to pretty much guarantee an Invite in under 3 months for all occupations except IT and Accounting. *If you think you cant get an 8 for IELTS there is another test called Pearsons which some people find easier to do. * Booking and writing these tests should be cheaper than assessing your partners skills. PARTNER SKILLS * Adding these five points, especially if you up your English points would then put you on 75 points and getting invite in the next round (except for Accounting) * If you are not going to redo the English you would need these five points PARTNER * If your partner's job is on the list as a nurse you cold potentially apply through her? 189/190 * Yes you can submit 2 EOI's. One can be for 189 on 65 points (including partner skills) and one can be a 190 on 70. Then you can apply whichever gets picked first. Hope that helps.

Hi, You do not need work experience to get a skills assessment done. To do a skill assessment for 189/190 First you need to pick an occupation from one of the Skill Shortages lists that you want to get your Skilled Visa for. One that matches your job/degrees you want to do. You then need to find the Assessing authority in Aus for that particular occupation, ACS for IT for example. You will then need to submit your qualifications, transcripts and syllabuses for each of your degrees. They will then assess whether your degree is of Aus quality and whether they are comparable to the occupation you have chosen from the Shortages List. For example you cant Choose Mechanic from the list and submit and IT degree, you will get 0 points. From the info you have provided above: * Yes, you can submit your degree for assessment without work experience, and IF you choose an occupation from the list that is comparable you should get 20 points for a Masters or Phd. * Doesnt matter if you did your Phd at Oxford, it will need to be assessed. As they not only assess the quality but the degree has to contain core subjects that they teach in Aus. * You need to TELL them your skill, they don't give you a skill. You say I want to do XYZ and here is my degree to prove I can do XYZ. and then they assess against that * Whether or not you need work experience depends on your total points, if you are only getting 60/65 points and looking to apply under IT you will most likely need more points. It sounds like you need to do a bit more reading, especially on how the Skills list works, choosing an occupation and points required. Perhaps make an appointment with an agent just for an initial assessment, these are usually free.

Hi, Is 321211 is a non pro rata application? If so there is a chance to be invited on 60 points, although you will most likely wait 12+ months, and in this time, depending on factors, such as age and experience you may lose points for age or gain points for experience. At the moment there is a backlog on invites so even 65 points are looking at around 6 months wait until after the year roll over in June 2018, probably why the agents are hesitant to take on people under 70 points. The good news is that the EOI is valid for 2 years and yes you can update it with your partner to add 5 points. Just be sure you cover all bases here to be able to prove these extra 5 points. Also when you do this your date of effect will move to the date you added the update. I have a friend who got an invite on 65 points last year so there is a chance, you are just unfortunate that there is such a back log at the moment. While your EOI is in at the moment and there will probably not be an invite until June 2018, you can use this time to try get more points? ie) Add your Partner, or did you get the maximum points for English, or will you gain more experience during this wait? This page gives you an unofficial estimate of your wait times: http://www.iscah.com/will-get-189-visa-invitation-iscahs-unofficial-estimates-12th-january-2018/

I am sure a full member of CIMA will give you 15 points, but as you mentioned, to be a full member you have to have 3 years work experience after finishing Top CIMA exams. Or did you only get 10 points even as a full member? Which is what was trying to say in my previous post, if your degree already qualifies as Aus equivalent for accounting then you can use those three years experience towards claiming points for Work Experience.

Reciprocal aggreemenrs such as ACCA, CIMA, ICA are 15 points, as the equal an Aus degree. I would assume ICAS is also part of that group. One thing to bear in mind though, is the work experience you can claim points for only starts counting from the day they think your education becomes equivalent of Aus degree. For ACCA, CIMA etc. this is after getting the Charter. So for example, if you did an accounting degree and that degree by itself is equivalent to an Aus degree your work experience can begin counting from the end of that degree. For something like ACCA, CIMA and I assume ICAS you would need to do articles or work for a few years to get the charter. Those years DO NOT count towards your Work Experience you can claim points for. Therefore if you did an accounting degree at Uni, it would be better to have that assessed if it meats all the minimum requirements (the 9 core areas) as specified on the ICCA and CPA website.

* To have your work experience assessed you need your experience signed off by your manager of that role or a more senior person. So if you are looking to claim points for the experience in your current role, then you would need to get your manager to sign it off or a more senior person like CEO if you dont want to speak to your manager. So you could bypass your manager but someone in the company would know as they will be signing it off. * My wifes skills assessment was around 2-3 pages per role, she was in each role between 2 and 4 years. Go to the CPA or ICAA websites, they are very detailed with what you need to provide, they even point you to a Aus Gov website which explains what they consider duties of an accountant. (IPA is the third body that can assess and they might have the same info but I never used their website) * The websites above list documents they will accept if you do not have payslips, things they accept are the job contract, proof of employment letter from HR, P60's, Proof of employment from HMRC (this takes about a month to come), Bank Statements. There might be more but check on the Accounting body you intend to assess through's website. --------------------- You can try here for unofficial estimates: http://www.iscah.com/news-page/ Or go here: https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/trav/work/skil You can then go down to "Invitation Rounds" and you will see what the "Date of Effect" is. When you submit your EOI that date is your date of effect, you need the departments date of effect to reach your date of effect before you get an invite. From current estimates, if you submitted EOI of 75 points January 2018 you might get invited before the year roll over end of June 2018. Anyone on 75 points submitted Dec 2017 or earlier should be ok to get invite prior to June 2018. With 80 points you should get an invite in 1 or 2 rounds. There are two rounds a month and you can see the next round on that website above. The draws are at 0h00 Sydney on a Wednesday. So 1pm Tuesday afternoon in UK. The rounds are two weeks apart.

Nope not yet We submitted our "decision ready" VISA applicatioon on 6 December... So hoping on grant now, probably a month or so to wait still as it seems most applications get first contact from CO after around 2 months.

No there is nothing specific in the skill assessment etc or any technicalities that makes it "harder" than other occupations but because it is a pro rata occupation and there is a very high application rate on this route you simply need a lot more points than other roles and things like the skills assessment take more time than other routes. For most other roles 65-70 points is enough but for accounting 75 is probably minimum if you want an invite in a reasonable time (or before you lose points for age etc) and the Accounting assessments are 5+ weeks (my wife's took 9 weeks) where my friend as a spacial scientist got his assessment back in under a week. Because you need 75+ points, we needed the full 20 points for English, 15 for qualifications and then points between age + experience to get there. We were lucky that my wife is 32 and has 10 years experience so we got 80 points in total. Not sure if that makes sense Let me know if you have any questions, this stuff is all fresh in my mind at the moment so will be happy to help.

Hi, I don't think work experience assessment is mandatory but it definitely helps. We have applied under accountant for my wife so have just gone through the process. When you submit your Qualifications to be assessed to either IPA/CPA or ICAA, there is usually an option to add Work Experience Assessment to it. It only takes a few days to do and only adds about AUD100 to the price but if it passes that you are pretty much guaranteed that you will pass when the DIBP look at it. These bodies require the same documents that need to be sent to DIBP so I found it was better getting it up front and paying 100 to have it assessed than risking sending it to DIBP and they decline the points after I have paid AUD7000 Visa Application fee. You will need 75 points on your EOI to stand a good chance to be invited so its worth having the work experience assessed to see how many points you can claim for. I think accountancy is by far the hardest route to get in, its best to do as much as possible for it. Hope that helps.

Iscah released an up to date estimate: http://www.iscah.com/will-get-189-visa-invitation-iscahs-unofficial-estimates-12th-january-2018/ You could leave the EOI until Oct and then resubmit with 5 more points, maybe you get lucky and picked up before then.

The direct flight from London to Perth starts from around March I believe, it is a ~17 hour flight. We will hopefully be using it in Oct if we get our Visa

Hi, I am assuming that social worker in one of the non pro-rata occupations, what I have found is that EOI submitted in Nov at 65 points, were looking at 6 months wait, if you could get 5 more points to 70 it would be around a month. You could go here for an unofficial estimate: http://www.iscah.com/will-get-189-invitation-iscahs-23rd-november-2017-update/ BUT this estimate was made in Nov when DIBP were doing 700 invites per draw and since then DIBP has a backlog they have gone down to 300 per draw, so the wait time has probably increased. What you could do is you can go here: https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/trav/work/Skil (scroll down to Invitation rounds) Go through each of the Invitation Rounds to see what the "Date of Effect" was for the 189 non pro rata applications. Your Date of Effect was the day you submitted your EOI. So you will get an invite when the date of effect on that site reaches yours. From what I could see if that on 22 Nov draw, the date of effect was for 70 points at 30 October, but the two draws in December didn't take any 70 pointers and the unofficial results for the first draw in Jan as found here (http://www.iscah.com/unofficial-skill-select-results-3rd-january-2018/) also show no 70 pointers, this means there is a lot of 70 point backlogs building up on top of your 65 points. As any 70+ point applications submitted after yours will go ahead of you in the queue and need to be invited first. As Alan mentioned, if you do not have any Birthdays coming up in the next year that will dock points off you for age you could probably stick it out, but trying to getting 5 more points from somewhere would be your best bet. Thanks.

The EOI year starts 1 July every year. So usually for Pro Rata roles like accounting there is a back log the first few invite rounds. So from July-Sep only 80 and 75 points gets invited and then by Jan the backlog is cleared and 70s get invited. That was the case for Jan 2017 people with 70 points were being invited but this meant that by March the pro rata was finished, and then in July 2017 there was a big back log. So for 2017/2018 DIBP decided that they will spread the invites out throughout the year so that pro rata would be invited for full year just fewer at a time. What this means is that people on 70 points pretty much have no chance this year, and 75 points are looking at at least 3 months at this point. If you look at the skill select web site you will see that the date of effect for 75 points is now at 18 October, meaning anyone after 18 Oct is now in a queue. Every two weeks when there is an invite this Date of effect moves forward by about 12 days (this changes depending on how many accountants get invited, but is around 12 days for 700 invites) If the date of effect moves forward +/- 12 days each Skillselect draw, it is roughly 7 draws to reach your Jan 2018 date of effect, so about 14 weeks. Probably more as there is a back log at the moment and last draw only took 300 invites. So we would need to see how many days it moves forward from 18 Oct. The best way to work it out is to check the how many days the date of effect moves forward after each draw. The last draw for example they only took 300 people and only a very few accountants, so 80 was the limit then and date of effect for 75 didn't move forward at all. If you can get 5 more points to 80 you a very likely to get in on the next draw, maximum two draws.

Amazing thank you so much.

Hi Iron Chef, Thank you for all the help you are providing on this forum. I was wondering if you could help on my car: Year of manufacture: 2017 - make, model & variant: Nissan Xtrail 1.6DiG-T Tekna - body type (coupe, convertible, etc): SUV - engine size & fuel type: Petrol 1.6L Turbo - transmission: Manual - drive type (4WD, front wheel drive, etc): FWD - mileage: 6000 Miles - any special features, options or modification: The Tekna trim is the top of the range for Xtrail it has: Leather Seats, Sunroof, Parking Sensors all around with cameras, automatic breaking, and loads of driver features, Automatic Parking, heated front seats, alloy wheels, Metallic paint and Built in touch screen which controls everything from Bluetooth, Radio, Satnav etc - does it have aircon: Yes - realistic current UK market value: £17000 - Australian RedBook value (www.redbook.com.au - click through to the page with 'Private Price Guide', 'Trade In Price Guide' and 'Price When New' listed, then tell us the 'Private Price Guide' range) : AUD21500 - AUD23800 - Australian market value (http://www.carsales.com.au/all-cars/search.aspx - search for the closest matching vehicle): The 2litre manual Xtrail are going for around AUD29k, but none of them will have the extra trim as they don't come with the leather seats etc. - which Australian state/city: Perth, WA Thank you for your help.

As Duke said, you need to start on Skill Select. Have you submitted your EOI? Once that is done it will go as follows: Once you submit you EOI the status in Skill Select will change to "Submitted" Once you have been Invited to apply for a visa through skill select you will get an email and the status will change to "Invited". This will then open an "Apply" button in Skill Select. Once you click aply in Skill Select it will link your account to MyImmiAccount and open up MyImmiAccount. Only then will all the forms etc become available. After that it changes to "Lodged"

Hi, Not sure which form you looking for but if I remember correctly you need to go to Skill Select first and click Apply, this will open MyImmiAccount and then you can continue. MyImmiAccount only gets prepped ready for application once you go through Skill Select. Thanks.