1st class welder coded wanting sponsor

[welshfitter]

My father is looking for a sponsor to move to Queensland, just wondering if anyone would know of anyone looking for to sponsor anyone.

 

Any help would be really appreciated

 

Andy

[Guest fatpom]

If he's a coded welder he wouldn't need a sponsor... should be able to do independent skilled I would have thought? Unless he's over 45 maybe??

[Guest donovan]

Hiya fatpom

 

He is in his early 50ties any ideas??

 

 

Sarah x

[Guest fatpom]

Hiya fatpom

 

He is in his early 50ties any ideas??

 

 

Sarah x

 

No, sorry this is one for Gollywobbler I suspect?

 

However, even with the downturn there's still work for good coded welders.

[Guest Gollywobbler]

Hello Andy

First of all, advise Dad in no uncertain terms to d-i-t-c-h the Agents that he approached, OK? They are NOT the best firm for him.

Look at the long term first, I suggest. Are your Parents able to meet the Balance of Family Test for permanent migration as Parents?

The balance of family test requires that:

 

• half your children must be permanently resident in Australia
  or
• you have more children permanently resident in Australia than any other single country.

If they can meet the BoF Test then the Parent subclass 103 or the Contributory Parent 143 visa is the "insurance policy" for this venture, if you like.

Family - Visas & Immigration

Parent Migration Booklet

If Parent migration is possible then I would be inclined to consider advising your Parents to make an application for the non-contributory Parent 103 visa without delay, so as to get the ball rolling on "insuring" the rest of the plan.

Parent (Migrant) Visa (Subclass 103)

Where time is on the Parents' side, which it is for relatively young parents, then the PV103 is an excellent visa - in many ways better than the CPV, not to mention infinitely cheaper - provided that there is a way for the Parents to be able to live & work in Oz whilst they wait for the PV103 to be processed. If they later decide that they want to hurry things up, they can switch into the Contributory Parent queue without having to pay another initial application fee, plus their CPV application is deemed to have been made at the time when the PV103 application was made so they are able to leapfrog the Queue for the CPV.

So if that bit is possible, advise Mum & Dad to get cracking on it. Parent migration is very straightforward so they can almost certainly manage without the help of a migration agent for this bit.

Meanwhile, it is not impossible that Dad could become eligible for PR in his own right via the fact that he has an occupation which is on the MODL:

Welder (First Class) 4122-15 - Australian Skills Recognition Information

I came across a Chef in Perth a few weeks ago. He is 54 and his employer-sponsored PR visa had been granted that day. Like Dad, this is almost certainly because both of them are on the MODL:

Is your occupation in demand? - Workers - Visas & Immigration

Exemptions from the normal age limit of 45 are sometimes possible with employer sponsored PR visas, as you have probably discovered. There is no upper age limit for the temporary subclass 457 visa. However it is unwise to try to get Dad out to Oz on a 457 visa unless you have a pathway to PR in mind for them in the long run, I suggest.

Workforce Solutions based in Brisbane is an on-hire company which has a European base in the UK:

Workforce Solutions

Workforce Solutions UK Website

WFS are unique (or very nearly so) with on-hire companies because they have what is called a "Labour Agreement" with the Australian Government. This means that WFS are able to sponsor workers for the temporary 457 visa themselves. The employer's end of the 3-stage process for the 457 visa has already been done between DIAC and WFS, leaving only Stage 3 - obtaining the worker's 457 visa - to be done once WFS make an offer which the worker accepts. The final stage can be done very quickly indeed because DIAC have approved the criteria which WFS use in selecting candidates for the visas.

As a matter of company policy, WFS have told me that:

 

• They will only sponsor for the temporary 457 visa themselves but they aim to place the worker in a long-term contract with a suitable employer in Oz and the idea is that the employer then sponsors the worker for PR via an ENS or RSMS visa; and
• They will not sponsor anybody who does not have a positive skills assessment.
  

They will certainly consider candidates who are under 50. I don't know whether they have an age policy about workers who are 50 or over. You would have to ask them.

Sarah has said that Dad is in his "early 50s." Can you be more specific, please? It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to get PR for Dad based on his occupation once his 55th birthday has passed. If he has to spend time on a 457 visa before he can apply for an ENS or RSMS visa, "early 50s" could mean "too close to 55 for comfort." You must be realistic about this, I suggest.

Also, it would be easier to get PR for Dad on an RSMS visa than on an ENS visa, I suspect (though, based on the Chef in Perth, not necessarily impossible perhaps.) For the RSMS visa, though, the employer must be based in "regional Australia." The Gold Coast is not "regional" so Dad would need to be willing to look further afield. Whether or not a place is "regional" depends on its postcode:

Eligible postcodes for the Regional Subclass 457 programme and Regional Sponsored Migration Scheme

All the postcodes listed for QLD are "regional". Anything outside of those numbers is not.

The next thing to consider is that age is not on Dad's side in terms of obtaining PR via the employer-sponsored route. Therefore Dad does NOT want to spend 2 years on a 457 visa before he can even apply to upgrade to PR via ENS or RSMS. If humanly possible he needs a positive skills assessment from TRA and Workforce Solutions would not consider him unless he can get the OK from TRA.

If he can get a positive skills assessment then potentially Dad need not bother with a 457 visa at all. A skilled migration agent would quite likely be able to persuade any employer (except for Workforce Solutions) to consider offering Dad an immediate ENS or RSMS PR visa instead. 457 visas place burdens on the employer which he would be better off not shouldering, whereas ENS and RSMS visas are not as onerous for the employer.

Also, armed with a TRA assessment Dad would be in a good bargaining position. He would be able to say that he will go to Oz fast, for the sake of speed, but he wants the employer to undertake to sponsor him for PR after a 3 month trial period only. That is a fairly common arrangement.

 

 

Continued/….

 

 

[Guest Gollywobbler]

So - would Dad be able to get a positive skills assessment from TRA? Since the closure of TRA Pathway D in September 2007 all candidates for TRA assessments MUST produce evidence of trades skills qualifications (NVQ or C&G) which are equivalent to or higher than the Australian AQF III qualification plus they must be able to show a period of formal or informal but nonetheless supervised training. The idea is to weed out the self-taught.

It may well be that Dad did a formal apprenticeship and then obtained his full C&G qualifications, in which case he should have no problem with TRA. If he does not have formal qualifications he may be able to get them via Recognition of Prior Learning and a workplace based assessment. NVQ provide this service, I believe.

Go Matilda - Your Gateway to Australia - News

If Dad can get a positive skills assessment then the chances are not bad that he would be able to find a willing employer-sponsor. If he draws up a short list of suitable target companies it might be worth his while to go out to QLD for a while and bang on doors. Aussie employers are impressed by people who do this because it shows that they are serious about moving to Oz and if Dad is in the process of getting a TRA assessment, or has one, then he is plainly not fooling about.

Where should he try to find target companies? I suggest two things (apart from your doing the obvious of scouring Yellow Pages and making contact with companies, your brother doing the same as well) in addition:

Contact Cheryl Bird of Bird Migration in Brisbane. She is a registered migration agent who keeps her ear to the ground for employers wanting migrant workers in QLD:

Bird Australian Migration Agency

Cheryl is lovely. She is a one-man-band agent so if she does not go out and find work, she does not get an income. It is not like she will get paid at the end of the month whatever happens, so Cheryl has an incentive to help you & Dad to find suitable employers and she knows what to say to the employer about visa options etc.

Go Matilda - Your Gateway to Australia - Contact and Feedback

Also contact Sarah White in the Brisbane office of Go Matilda. GM are much bigger and therefore much better-known than Cheryl, so they might know suitable companies as well. Plus both Cheryl & Sarah know the area, which always helps.

According to the Officials in QLD, the State is short of welders:

http://www.workplace.gov.au/NR/rdonlyres/BD15ADD0-DCF8-40D8-AD4A-0B450F3AAA2B/0/412215QLDWelder.pdf

Welder is also on the Priority Skills List for QLD if the welder is aged 44 or under, so they are serious because the QLD State Government would have been able to sponsor Dad for immediate PR if he were younger.

Please study the contents of this link:

Work and careers in Queensland, Australia

Click on the sub-links. It might all help.

 

 

Continued/….

 

 

[Guest Gollywobbler]

All the above under way (all of you will be busy!) the next thing to consider is possible visa pathways for Dad. There is no reason why he cannot do a complete “pick’n’mix” with visa options, with applications for different types of visa running concurrently.

I would suggest as follows:

If Mum & Dad are eligible for Parent migration, make an application for a Parent subclass 103 visa as soon as possible, or for a Contributory Parent visa instead if they can afford it and do not want to risk a long wait. (Currently around 8 to 9 years for the PV 103 and 2 to 3 years for a CPV, by the way.)

Find an employer, do a good deal with the help of a skilled migration agent and get Dad out to Oz, either on immediate PR via an RSMS or ENS visa or, failing that, on a short term 457 visa to start with.

If he has to use a 457 visa to start with, apply to upgrade to the ENS or RSMS visa as soon as he possibly can. If DIAC grant skilled PR, the Parent visa application can then be withdrawn.

If DIAC will not grant PR (though it sounds as if they probably would with QLD being so keen to attract welders) no matter. The PV 103 application would still be in the pipeline, Dad would still be on the 457 visa and Mum & Dad would have the option of switching to the CPV queue at that stage without having to pay a new application fee for the CPV. Plus they would get quite a bit of processing priority because that is determined by the date on which the PV 103 application was made.

Although it all sounds very convoluted and difficult, it actually isn’t difficult if you just do the whole thing one step at a time.

Go Matilda intend to try the route described above with one of our other PiO members, a 55 year old nurse whose daughter lives in Darwin. Because Mum is 55 they are not going to muck about for too long. The plan is to apply for a CPV and apply for Mum’s skills assessment at the same time. A hospital in Darwin is willing to sponsor Mum for a 457 visa, so that bit should be OK. They then intend to apply for an RSMS visa for Mum as soon as they can. If it works, well & good. If it doesn’t then the CPV will be granted anyway as soon as Mum reaches the front of the processing queue for it. The thing with MODL skills is that they are very easy to define plus they are skills in top demand in Australia, which makes the workers very attractive and DIAC pretty co-operative as a result!

Best wishes

Gill