stokie123 Posted March 10, 2018 Share Posted March 10, 2018 Hello all! We are in the exciting/daunting first stages of looking into moving our family to Australia from the UK and would love some general advice on which options to look into for our specific situation. We are looking to move to Melbourne where we have family who emigrating there some years ago. Both myself and my partner work full time in the IT Software industry in London. I work as a Software/Applications Manager and my partner is in Software Sales. My skills are on the Victoria state occupational list but although I have been working in the industry for more than 10 years, reaching senior level, this has not been done by achieving any certification to prove my skills (Official Project Management or BA certification) and has been done by natural progression and experience only. The other option is the employer sponsored route of which both mine and my partners occupations are applicable. However, I have heard that this route would mean that we may have to pay for our children's schooling until we get some kind of permanent residency? My key questions are: 1. Should I study to get official certification to boost my chances of getting a state sponsored Visa which is overall going to be a much more costly route (£1000 for the certification course and higher price for the visa)? 2. If I do get state sponsored visa what visas would the rest of my family need? 3. What are the benefits vs the downsides of going state/employer sponsored considering we are a young family and need to ensure stability for our children? Thanks so much for your help in advance! Sophie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VERYSTORMY Posted March 10, 2018 Share Posted March 10, 2018 1. You need to check with the Australian computer society what is required to pass the skills assessment. 2. None. Only one of you needs to qualify. The rest of the family are included in your application and are granted there own visas. 3. A state sponsored visa is a permanent visa which allows you to live and work indefinitely in Australia for any employer in any job. A employer sponsored is usually a temporary visa. It may have no ability to become permanent (the new TSS specifically prevents people whose occupations are only on the short term list from getting a PR visa). Even if PR is possible down the line, you would need to assume you are returning to the uk. It is tied to the employer. Lose your job and you only have 60 days to find another sponsor or all leave the country. There are a range of other issues as well. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marisawright Posted March 10, 2018 Share Posted March 10, 2018 As VeryStormy says, if you get an employer-sponsored visa, be aware that it's usually a temporary contract. It's possible you might get sponsored permanently at the end of the contract, but you'd still need to be eligible for PR - you don't get any extra brownie points for having spent some time in Australia. If it's just the two of you, no kids, then the temp employer visa would give you a chance to have a bit of an adventure and see how you like it, but that's about it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stokie123 Posted March 10, 2018 Author Share Posted March 10, 2018 Many thanks for the responses. For stability for the family it sounds like the state sponsored visa is the best option but I'm going to need another few years of working in my field to qualify which is a shame (I don't have the 'right' kind of degree to boost the professional experience I've gained). The 457 would give us an opportunity to move sooner and without so many initial restrictions but it would be risky considering we could be deported at the end if we don't have the points required and our employers are not happy to continue sponsoring us. Its such a hard thing to weigh up when you have children to support but I see lots of families doing it anyway (chancing it on a 457) regardless of the risks involved. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marisawright Posted March 10, 2018 Share Posted March 10, 2018 (edited) 3 hours ago, stokie123 said: The 457 would give us an opportunity to move sooner and without so many initial restrictions but it would be risky considering we could be deported at the end if we don't have the points required and our employers are not happy to continue sponsoring us. Its such a hard thing to weigh up when you have children to support but I see lots of families doing it anyway (chancing it on a 457) regardless of the risks involved. The risks are greater than just being deported at the end, actually. What if you get there, and find the employer lied about the job? What if you can't stand your boss? What if the company goes bust? You'll have to go home, unless you can find another sponsor - and that's not as easy as just finding another job. Sponsoring an employee is not easy for a company. There's a lot of paperwork and cost. What that means is that if you're on a temp visa and need to change jobs, you'll be applying for other jobs and getting beaten by less-qualified locals every time. Most employers would rather compromise on the candidate than go through all the time and expense of a sponsorship. There's another problem - exploitation. Your sponsoring company knows they've got you over a barrel. They can treat you as badly as they like, demanding unpaid overtime etc, because they know you don't want to go home and they know how hard it will be for you to find another job. They may make promises about bonuses or extra benefits, but what can you do if they don't eventuate? Nothing. I know I'm painting a bleak picture here, and it's true there are plenty of people who arrived on a 457 and transitioned to PR. You'll find some of them here, if you dig back in the forums - but for every one who made it, you'll find another forum thread by a family who ended up being bundled out of the country, returning to the UK with half their savings gone - and sometimes within less than a year. I can't tell you what the percentage is, there are no statistics - but judging by what I see here, the failure rate is high. Bear in mind also that while you're on a temp visa, your wife may struggle to get work (employers don't want to take on someone who may disappear any moment), you may have to pay school fees for your children, and there are restrictions on things like buying a house. You'll also need to get your head around the new temp visas which have replaced the 457. The 457 was designed to fill short-term vacancies in the labour market, and the Government has always been unhappy with people using it as a pathway to permanent residency. I believe they've made it more difficult with the new visas but TBH I know nothing about them yet. Edited March 10, 2018 by Marisawright 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LKC Posted March 10, 2018 Share Posted March 10, 2018 3 hours ago, stokie123 said: Many thanks for the responses. For stability for the family it sounds like the state sponsored visa is the best option but I'm going to need another few years of working in my field to qualify which is a shame (I don't have the 'right' kind of degree to boost the professional experience I've gained). The 457 would give us an opportunity to move sooner and without so many initial restrictions but it would be risky considering we could be deported at the end if we don't have the points required and our employers are not happy to continue sponsoring us. Its such a hard thing to weigh up when you have children to support but I see lots of families doing it anyway (chancing it on a 457) regardless of the risks involved. We moved to Australia on a 457 with my husband's job. A month after we got PR his occupation was removed from the list. We'd have been fine, because although I was at home with the kids at the time, my occupation was (and still is) on the list, so we could have switched, with him at home with the kids and me out working for the visa. A temporary visa is a temporary visa, and you should probably not risk it with kids without a backup route to PR, if that is the aim. I know there have been lots of changes recently with the temporary visas, so you need to double check what those are. If you are happy to treat the move as a temporary thing, then move on a temporary visa. However, if you would like to move on a more long term basis I would always recommend PR with kids unless you have a solid backup. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
calNgary Posted March 11, 2018 Share Posted March 11, 2018 Personally i would go with the PR visa and spend the next few years saving funds and reseaching the State your looking at.. The PR visa offers much more security once here ,especially if you have children. I would only go employer sponsered as a last available option. Good luck with everything Cal x Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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