confused dot com with Visa 175

[tony_bezza]

Hi good people of the pomz in oz forums can i firstly say hapy new year to you all.

Now i was wondering if anyone out there can help me regarding the 175 visa. I will be a qualified lift engineer (mechanic) in march or april and am wanting to apply for a skilled 175 visa. Firstly is there an easy website to follow with lemans terms as i find the government literature as clear as mud. Basically do i need to give copies of my birth certificate, qualification certificate, passport and do i need to have a job lined up first and do i need to show i have ex amount of dollars. I am 28 and my girlfriend is 30 who will also be applying for a visa 175 , she is a newly qualified teacher and we both want to try and do the application our selves as we feel paying a company to fill in a few forms is lazy on our behalf. Please can anybody set us on our way in the applying for a 175 visa and tell us a bit about the process.

 

Thanks alot guys and girls

[CharmedP3]

Hi good people of the pomz in oz forums can i firstly say hapy new year to you all.

Now i was wondering if anyone out there can help me regarding the 175 visa. I will be a qualified lift engineer (mechanic) in march or april and am wanting to apply for a skilled 175 visa. Firstly is there an easy website to follow with lemans terms as i find the government literature as clear as mud. Basically do i need to give copies of my birth certificate, qualification certificate, passport and do i need to have a job lined up first and do i need to show i have ex amount of dollars. I am 28 and my girlfriend is 30 who will also be applying for a visa 175 , she is a newly qualified teacher and we both want to try and do the application our selves as we feel paying a company to fill in a few forms is lazy on our behalf. Please can anybody set us on our way in the applying for a 175 visa and tell us a bit about the process.

 

Thanks alot guys and girls

 

Don't think of it as lazy to use an agent to help with all or part of your application.... it's often a necessity to make sure you get it right.... we used an agent for our skills assessment but after that we did the rest ourselves.

 

I guess your first step is to establish that your skills are wanted by Oz. You really do need to refer to the immi website for this. You then need to establish how to get your skills formerly assessed before you can even think about your visa application... this is WHY it's probably a good idea to speak to a couple of registered agents first... get some good advise and take it from there.

[tony_bezza]

I see, so do you know of some good registered agents and my skills are wanted by aus (lift mechanic) but how do you get them formerly assessed before application.

Thanks for your help

[CharmedP3]

I see, so do you know of some good registered agents and my skills are wanted by aus (lift mechanic) but how do you get them formerly assessed before application.

Thanks for your help

 

There are plenty off good registered agents out there...and I am sure you will get some recommendations from members of PIO. We used Go Matilda.

 

I know you say official government websites confuse you, but you really will have to come to terms with them as they will become a valuable source of information to you... have you even looked at immi.gov.au ? It really isn't too hard to decipher...

 

Australian Skills Recognition Information (ASRI) find out how to get your skills assessed

 

Is your occupation in demand? - Workers - Visas & Immigration are you wanted down under ?

[Pumpkin]

I think one of the first things you should do is determine whether you can apply for one visa between you and if so who would be main applicant.

 

If you qualify as defacto (i.e. have been living together for a year) and your OH is a secondary school teacher with work experience, then she would be better as the main applicant. If she is a primary school teacher, then you would be the better main applicant.

 

Once you have worked out who should be the main applicant, you should do a points test and if you pass that and decide to proceed then the first step is skills assessment. DIAC specify what body should assess skills for each occupation, you should read up on what is required for your particular professions. Your skills needs to be assessed by TRA, your OH's by Teaching Australia.

 

If you are prepared to spend the time reading around then you don't necessarily need an agent. If you don't want to spend time reading around then an agent could be invaluable. It is personal choice.

[terry & Melanie]

We have done it without an agent. We found the easiest and quickest is an online application. The hardest bit was getting all the documentation together. (You can download a document checklist from the DIAC).But you'd have to do that wether you were using an agent or not. Like Pumpkin said the first step is to see if you qualify as defacto, so you can both apply on the same visa..

 

Melanie

[Guest Gollywobbler]

Hi Tony

 

I agree with CharmedP3. It is not necessary for you to let an agent do all the paperwork for you but the good ones all want a 15 minute chat with you at no cost to you and no obligation to use the agent concerned. The thing about talking to an agent is that it is a Q&A session which forums don't really offer.

 

You can read the DIAC website - between you - and you can get it right. However it is backbreaking work because you just have to read and re-read until it all begins to make sense. It is not easy to do this after work - when you are tired - and at weekends etc. For this reason, many people use agents.

 

Speak to me about your GF first, please. What sort of Teacher is she? (Primary, Secondary etc?)

 

A-Z Occupations List - Australian Skills Recognition Information

 

Does she have recent work experience of teaching after she was qualified? If not, can she get 12 months of work experience as a teacher in the UK?

 

Turning to you, your occupation is here:

 

Lift Mechanic 4311-15 - Australian Skills Recognition Information

 

The skills assessment authority is TRA and they published a new Uniform Assessment Criteria which became effective today, 1st Jan 2010:

 

http://www.deewr.gov.au/Skills/Programs/TRA/residenceVisa/Documents/UniformCriteria.pdf

 

Please read sections 8, 9 and 10 very closely. What sort of apprenticeship did you do/are you doing? Is it a four year formal, registered one or is it a five year informal apprenticeship?

 

I am not a migration agent so I am not sure whether you will be caught out by the 12 months' recent, relevant work experience requirement, introduced by DIAC (Dept of Immi & Citizenship) today. I think you might be because they may not accept the time you spent before you become qualified but this is something you would need to ask an experienced agent about. The ComLaw site is down at the moment so I can't even see the wording of the source documents but the thread about it is here:

 

http://www.pomsinoz.com/forum/migration-issues/74783-occupations-requiring-recent-work-experience.html

 

I think you definitely need an agent to answer the question above because these new rules are so new that nobody has any experience of working with them as yet.

 

Hence I wonder whether it wouldn't be better to use your GF as the main applicant, for two reasons. In no particular order:

 

1. Even if you can apply pretty soon and I am worrying about nothing on that score, the document below bites:

 

http://www.immi.gov.au/skilled/general-skilled-migration/pdf/faq-priority-processing.pdf

 

If you were to apply for a sc 175 visa it might well take 3 or more years before DIAC would do anything about processing the application if you were to be the main applicant.

 

2. Your chances of getting an employer sponsored visa are not very good. However your GF might do a lot better on this front even with no work experience to speak of as yet. Many of the State/Territory Government Education Departments are sponsoring Teachers at the moment and with newly qualified teachers it may be possible for them to sponsor without waiting for the teacher to get any solid experience offshore first.

 

I don't know what the drills are with the education depts as far as work experience goes and the chances are that an agent won't know either but there is no reason why you can't google the Education Depts and then ring them up and ask what the score is in their State, I suggest.

 

Cheers

 

Gill

[tony_bezza]

thanks alot for you replies to my post people, you are very helpful people and i am grateful. Gill my girlfriend has just advised me that she has actually spoken to you tonight lol (how wierd). I have viewed the link you forwarded me and can now see that there is no way i could apply to go to Australia as no.1 I am not qualified yet as a lift mechanic, i get my nvq in march/april. 2. i have not done an apprenticeship. 3. i have worked in the lift indusry for 9 years but will have no experience as a fully qualified engineer in there eyes. 4. A lift mechanic here does an NVQ and gets there ticket which covers mechanical and electrical but in Aus you need electrical qualifications too. I think our best bet is me trying to get sponsorship with Schindler who i work for or seeing if Emma my girlfriend can get sponsorship through her teaching and me going on her visa as a spouse.

Such a shame we both seem to have careers that are not straight forward in recognition from Australia.

 

Regards

Tony

[Guest Gollywobbler]

Hi Tony

 

Ah! The penny drops! Your GF is Emma C! Oddly enough I was going to post the link to Emma C's thread for your GF to read, thinking it was a bit spooky to have two newly qualified teachers on here on the same day but you never know.....!

 

To be honest I don't think that migrating to Oz at all is straightfoward for most people at the moment, particularly with the Minister for Immi shifting the goalposts on everyone every five minutes.

 

The point about Emma's occupation is that it is the same as nursing, in the sense that schools and hospitals don't want highly experienced staff only - they want nurses and teachers right across the experience range.

 

I think it is definitely worthwhile Emma speaking with WA DET and with Smart Teachers. Let us discover the lie of the land with her, I reckon.

 

With regard to you, I am less sure. When you talk about electrics etc with lifts, I'm the twit who gets in the lift and pushes the button for which floor I want. I've no idea how the lift works except the bleedin' obvious of where it ends up!

 

Lift Mechanic 4311-15 - Australian Skills Recognition Information

 

The above is the brief ASRI description. The detailed description of what an Aussie lift mechanic does is in ASCO, which is here:

 

1220.0 - Australian Standard Classification of Occupations (ASCO) Second Edition, 1997

 

I do agree with you that the rubric at the top of ASCO suggests that lift mechanics are lumped in with electricians in Oz but when you look at the ASCO description - the "tasks include" section - how many of those tasks do you actually do, please, in the UK?

 

I'd suggest having preliminary chats with Ian Harrop and Go Matilda in the UK next week:

 

Registered Australian Migration Agents, UK - Ian Harrop and Associates

 

Go Matilda - Your Gateway to Australia - Contact and Feedback

 

If what you say is right, this will be a general problem in the UK for lift mechanics and one or other of the above will know about it. I'd check this out before you write yourself off, hun!

 

Cheers

 

Gill

[tony_bezza]

ok Gill that is exactly what we will do, Emma has done what you said and will await response. I will wait to see what feedback she gets then i will contact Ian Harrop and Go Matilda in regards to my occupation queries. You have been a great help Gill i was just wondering are you an aussie living in southampton England or if you are going through the application process your self. Once again me and Em do appreciate your help and feedback.

 

cheers

tony