General Consensus re New Visa Applications?

[Guest Freudian Slip]

We are not sure what to do. We met with a migration agent yesterday who said we could apply for the 176 visa once husband has completed the AQF 111 in Telecommunications and gone through TRA. If his occupation is taken off the new skills list in April will we still be eligible? I have an aunt in Brisbane who will sponsor us, and we would like to go to Brisbane but will start off anywhere! I'm a bit confused with these changes, who they will affect and how! Another question I have is what do people think of using an agent and any recommendations?:err:

 

Hi jjswon

 

We are in a similar situation to you, only the OH (sdp) is a plasterer.

Our agent today has advised us to carry on with the AQF, then go down the family sponsor route to make up our 15 points we have now just lost.

We had a choice, he can either take the English Launuage Test or we could do the family sponsored route, (he has an Uncle out there ) I think we will choose the latter if we can get his Uncle to sponsor us, which I'm sure he will.

 

As I understand it, if you get your Visa lodged before 1st July 2010, you should be fine, even if your husbands occupation isn't on the new list. Just because the new list will be available to view from the 30th of April, doesn't mean it will be actively taking effect from that time.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Regards, Gill.

[Guest Freudian Slip]

In answer to the original post, yes I am re-considering going to Oz!!!

 

I have served in the RAF for 23 years and handed in my notice in order to emigrate to Oz. Being 39 and an aircraft technician I had 120 points and was on the critical skills list. My skills assessment is lodged with the TRA and should come back in 4 weeks time, at which point I was goimg to apply for a 175 visa.

 

Now I will need to take the IELTS test and pass at level 6 or 7 AND get state sponsership!!!!

I have no idea how long this process takes as up until this point it did not effect me. Come December I will be 40 and lose another 5 points which means I will then need the IELTS at level 7.

 

With the cuts that are likely to the Armed Forces I doubt if they would let me remove my notice as they are looking to thin out by around 20% if the rumours are true, so either a 176 visa for me or look for a job outside of the RAF fairly quickly!!

 

Looks like it's a few cans of Stella tonight and research the 176 visa!!!!!

 

Good luck to all those people who have had the rug well and truly pulled out, including those who may well have their applications scrapped after waiting so long.

 

 

 

Don't give up snowy, where there is a will there is a way!

 

 

P.S....Enjoy your Stella.....if I could stand to drink the stuff, I would be having some too! :eek:

[Guest Gollywobbler]

Hi Tony

 

I agree that from jjswon's point of view, there are risks whichever way they do things.

 

However for a RMA to say that he ignores what the process will cost the client - particularly if it turns out that the application cannot be made before 1st July - strikes me as completely irresponsible, frankly.

 

What if the client ends up losing more than £5,000 GBP (including the RMA's fees) simply because the RMA pushed jjswon into forging ahead when the RMA really had no idea of whether or not the timing would work out? And no idea what the law would become either?

 

Jjswon was advised to embark on the whole process immediately - by an RMA at an Expo or something yesterday, I gather. The draft enabling legislation wasn't even produced by yesterday, therefore how could the RMA have been doing anything more than taking a totally wild guess at the whole thing?

 

Cheers

 

Gill

[Guest china]

Hi Munchkinpie

I wrote a long garbled reply this morning but the server crashed - aarrghh! So this moght be a little moot since all the other replies but I thought I'd pop it on anyway;

Anyway the long and short of it is; we are getting our paperwork together for our application, just about to send of skills assessment application, booked IELTS for extra points, etc. My partner is the main applicant, he is a secondary school science teacher, and we are applying with an Australian brother (he's a naturalized citizen). Secondary teacher is on the current CSL so we are basically trying to get everything lodges as quickly as humanly possible, in an attempt to get in before any new, possibly detrimental changes, come into effect.

They say they are going to revoke the current CSL and also change the SOL - I am hoping teacher will still be on there but the website says teh following;

Q 12 If I apply for a GSM visa in April 2010, will I be subject to the new SOL?

No, as the new SOL does not commence until mid- 2010.

And so this makes me think I should just do everything now, quickly! Also my partner is 41 this year, and we only just scrape 105 points, assuming he gets the IELTS points (105 = enough for SKilled - sponsored - until of course they cahnge the points requirements (if they do)), so if things change we may not be able to apply at all.

Sorry that this isn't exactly constructive, but I wanted to let you know there are other people feeling the same as you, and to let you know what we're doing/thinking. We could be completely wrong, but I feel like for us, waiting could be a mistake.

Hope I've helped ()

xx

[Welshtone]

Hi Gill

 

My advice would be for jjswons to do utmost to lodge prior to 01 July 2010 as they will not be reliant on a State sponsorship with a sponsoring relative. What could easily happen is that the occupation may not be on SOL for applications lodged on or after 01 July 2010 and their only option would be a possible State Sponsorship despite having a relative in Australia. I think the likely scenario is that if they do apply for 176 family sponsored in time, they are then likely to go for State Sponsorship, if it is available, so as to get priority processing. The worst case scenario for jjswons would be committing to the AQF Cert iii, and not getting through TRA in time and not having a pathway after 30th June 2010.

 

Regards

 

 

Tony Coates

[Guest snowy10]

Don't give up snowy, where there is a will there is a way!

 

 

P.S....Enjoy your Stella.....if I could stand to drink the stuff, I would be having some too! :eek:

 

 

Thanks for that, No way am I giving up, "don't let the Bast****ds get you down:wink:!!!!

 

Just downing my second stella trying to figure out how to go about getting a 176 visa. I have 105 points without IELTS and my trade is on SA wanted list. So only requiring 100 points and getting state sponsorship may make the process quicker for me, every cloud.........

 

Might sound like a dumb question,

 

1. If I get state sponsorship I take it I just apply for a 176 visa the same as I would for a 175 visa?? (I know how to do this)

2. I can not find where/how to apply for SA state sponsorship, I have found that it takes around 4 weeks if successful but one of the pages I went to said "the link appears to be broken" and I think this is the page I will need to apply.

Can anyone offer any assistance?? Also, is there a fee payable to obtain state sponsorship.

 

Thanks again in advance for any help.

[Guest Freudian Slip]

Hi Tony

 

Several other agents - Alan Collett and George Lombard in particular - are both saying that they do NOT think that new applicants should spend any money at all on any part of the visa process at the present time.

 

The risks with forging ahead at the moment are:

 

1. We do not know what the new SOL will say and how many points it will award for a particular occupation. We don't even know for sure whether "Communications Linesperson" will be on the new SOL, let alone how many points the new SOL would award for it.

 

2. There are strong rumours that the new State Migration Plans will work so as to award extra SOL points to a particular occupation in that particular State if, say, "Communication Linesperson" is in the SMP for WA but it is not in the SMP for QLD.

 

However nobody knows whether or not this is simply a rumour. Even the States don't know whether it is only a rumour because they all say that the details of the new SMPs have not even been considered by anybody as yet - by themselves or by the Minister. Nobody knows how the new SMPs are supposed to work but what is certain is that they can't even be produced until the new SOL has been thrashed out and the new Points awards made.

 

3. The Minister is also talkiing about raising the bar for offshore GSM visas via the Points Test. According to the newsflashes I've been receiving today, the Minister could do this one of two ways: either he could say, "The pass-mark for a sc 176 visa will be 120" - that notion would tie in with his idea that he actually only wants visa applicants who are currently aged under 30.

 

Alternatively he might create a competitive pass-mark via the Points. If so then he might say that the pecking order for each Communication Linesperson will depend on the number of Points that each of them has. If he takes this line then it will certainly favour the younger applicant. It might also favour an applicant with more experience than the next man of the same age. Nobody knows whether the State Migration Plans will be linked to the Points in some way, either.

 

4, Plus the Minister is talking about amending the Migration Act so that he can say that Australia willl only accept [say] 100 Communications Linespeople a year. Nobody knows whether he is planniing to tell jjswon how many applications he is holding for this particular application - and how strong the other applications look against the quota of 100 Communications Linepersons a year. This is another bit that the Minister has failed to think out properly. Since he admits that he will have to go to Parliament to get the Migration Act changed, if Parliament has any decency the other MPs will INSIST that jjswon must be given the whole, unvarnished picture from the very outset. However during a General Election year they could simply rubber-stamp whatever the Minister wants instead.

 

Jjswon tells us, on this thread, that her Hubby will need to pass the AQF III as a Communications Linesperson before he can proceed with any of the rest of the process anyway. So - how much would getting the AQF III cost him? I don't know whether it is now possible to get an AQF IIII for a Communications Linesperson in the UK. If it is now possible to do it in the UK, the cost of the AQF IIII alone is likely to be at least £2,000 GBP.

 

If more than one provider now offers the AQF III in the UK, jjswon would be told to choose the provider who can get the qualification for him the fastest, not the one who might be quite a bit cheaper but might take considerably longer.

 

A year or two back, RMAs didn't want to know about Communications Linespeople because very few of them had/have any formal British qualifications. The RMAs couldn't see a way forward for them once Pathway D was closed in September 2009.

 

Flixy proved the RMAs wrong. She did a vast amount of hard graft and discovered that her OH could get the AQF III if he did some distance learning in the UK (which involved paying the Aussie provider for the distance learning course) and then OH went to Sydney in person in order to do the AQF III. The trip to Sydney was anything but cheap - is cost considerably more than £2,000 GBP because of the costs of air-travel, accommodation in Sydney, food in Sydney, over-the-ground travel in Sydney as well as paying the AQF III people in Sydney. At the time, the exchange rate made Sterling much stronger than it is now, as well.

 

The RMA has told jjswon blithely that they should pay all these costs - regardless of how much they might come to or how long it is all likely to take - plus of course jjswon should pay the RMAs fees as well.

 

Assuming that jjswon pays all the costs and gets the AQF III, nobody knows how long it will take for the RMA and jjswon to get the TRA application together. We are already into February now. TRA now take a mimunim of 30 working days from the date when they receive the candidate's application.

 

However assuming that both of these limbs are completed prior to 1st July 2010, we

still don't know how any of my numbered points above will actually work and we don't know how long the process is likely to take, either.

 

The RMAs Code of Conduct requires - requires, it does not just suggest - that the RMA should be able to give hhswon the entire story before the RMA takes a single penny from jjswon for the RMA's fees.

 

Therefore is the RMA going to share the financial risks with jjswon? Such as the idea that the RMA will work completely for free until such time as ALL of the RMA's blithe plans have worked out to hhswon's advantage and a viable visa appllication is actuallly made?

 

I very much doubt it, Tony! I think that any RMA who accepts a single penny from a new applicant when everything is so uncertain is playing with absolute fire in the eyes of the OMARA - which is now run by two senior DIAC Officers, remember.

 

DIAC are not suggesting that any applicant should act preciipately at this stage. They would be much happier if NO applicant does a single thing that the applicant might end up regretting financially until the whole situation becomes very much clearer than it is today. It would suit DIAC if no further GSM applications are made between now and 30th June 2011. It would help them to reduce their backlog and it would keep all new applicants safe from any harm.

 

The Australian Government are the ONLY crowd I've ever met whose attitude is, "Australia will still be here tomorrow, next year and in a decade's time. We'd love ou to come and visit our country - the more you do that the better as far as we are concerned. However if you don't want to live here and you don't even want to visit the place, that is fine too. We accept that Australia is not for everyone."

 

So DIAC are never going to tell an RMA, "Oh yes, you did the right thing by encouraging jjswon to act in haste so that YOU could get some fees for yourself out of this haste, RMA."

 

If I were an RMA, I'd follow George and Alan myself. LOADS of RMAs do not have either the new clients or the capital to weather the storm up ahead. Many of them will simply be grateful to offload their existing clients on to somebody else so that the first RMA can walk away from the whole thing.

 

From an RMA's point of vuew, there is no point in protecting the RMA's cash-flow today if the eventual result is that his/her registration as an RMA will be cancelled.

 

My personal view - since I'm not looking for an Aussie visa and I'm not a migration agent either - is that both sides need to slow down. The announcement was only made yesterday. There are LOADS of legal and practical problems with the announcements that have been made so far, as well.

 

Once this Minister realises that DIAC have only seen the issues from his own, narrow point of view and that outsiders can see a huge raft of problems heading the Minister's way, this particular Minister has shown in the past that he's just as likely to announce a Whole New Plan at Easter as he is to try to press on with his present, garbled ideas.

Senator Chris Evans has proven - and this is the fourth time he has proven it - that Unpredictable would be a better middle name for him than Vaughan, frankly!

 

Cheers

 

Gill

 

Hi Gollywobbler

 

I have only just been able to take the time to read through all this properly and to actually take it in, you make some valid points. And now I really don't know what to do. Do we take the risk,and go ahead, spend some serious money and hope that our visa gets lodged before July the 1st. Or do we wait and hope that his occupation is on the new list or suffer the consequences if it isn't?

 

This is just an absolute nightmare of a scenario! I don't know what to do for the best.

 

 

Regards, Gill.

[Graemsay]

Is it such a bad time to be applying?

 

If you've got state sponsorship (which is pretty much a necessity) or still have 120 points, and are on the CSL, then your application will go through very quickly. It's taking about two and a half months for a case officer to be assigned, and a month or two beyond that to be granted a visa. It's very possible you could be done by the time the SOL comes through.

 

So in many ways I'm with Tony. Particularly if applicants are holding off.

[melbournegirlinny]

If you have a job offer and RSMS then you really should go for it. It is so hard when you are out of Australia to get a job offer and so you are really in a fortunate position. If you really want to move to Australia, I'd take the job wherever it is and figure out in 2 years' time if you want to move somewhere else.

[Guest paulandtara]

This is confusing me a lot, Tara and I have passed our skills assessment, got state sponsorship for WA and after the changes fortunately still have 125 points and were going to lodge our visa application next week. Are the RMA's saying not to lodge our application because if our trade isn't on the new SOL the it will be rejected...or, as long as it's on the SOL when we apply then we are safe from future changes to the list?

 

We'd appreciate any advice,

 

Paul & Tara

[Welshtone]

Hi Paul and Tara

 

This is one of the big questions that needs a direct answer from DIAC. George Lombard is on to it and is pressing the MIA to get a definitive. Hopefully we can get an answer by the end of the week - so maybe sit tight for a few days.

 

Regards

 

 

Tony Coates

[Guest Dawn32]

hi,just wondered how you getting on ,i am doing my carpenters test in march and hopefully going down the same route as yourself.thanks colin.

[cartertucker]

Just wondered if any of those who were just about to take the first steps in their Visa Application are having a change of heart in respect of when to submit etc?

 

We have yet to submit our visa application and are now going to concentrate the next 6 months with oh seeking employment with a hope for sponsorship (ENS121)

 

We have decided to ride out the next 6 months with hope and prayer ...and big toes crossed :wacko: ...... that by mid 2010 oh occupation is still on whichever new lists the powers that be throw at us!

 

What are other "newbies" thinking? Anyone think we are shooting ourselfs in the foot by hanging off?

 

All constructive comments appreciated.

 

xxx

 

 

Great thread idea....:yes:

Have 'clicked your chick' ;0)

 

I had a thought, that a 'poll' would be a great idea to add on? Whatcha think?

 

I remember, way back now, when we first started our process, we were waiting & waiting for the 'pathway D' to be 'sorted' out.....So believe me, I know how all you guys are feeling, not knowing if your even going to get the chance to apply.....:frown:

 

I wish you all the very best of luck & hope things go your way

[munchkinpie]

Great thread idea....:yes:

Have 'clicked your chick' ;0)

 

I had a thought, that a 'poll' would be a great idea to add on? Whatcha think?

 

I remember, way back now, when we first started our process, we were waiting & waiting for the 'pathway D' to be 'sorted' out.....So believe me, I know how all you guys are feeling, not knowing if your even going to get the chance to apply.....:frown:

 

I wish you all the very best of luck & hope things go your way

 

 

Think a Poll would be great Cartertucker - if anyone can tell me how to do it lol!

 

We are still umming and ahhing over what to do! Although in fairness we have a few personal things to tie up before we could submit visa so time isnt being entirely wasted. OH has contacted a heap of companies with lots of positive feedback and is actually meeting with a company who have someone in London next week potentially recruiting :eek:

We have also found out which states have OH occupation on list with possibility of looking at state sponsorship.

Probably should get his skills assessed asap too so guess thats top of this weeks to-do-list!

 

L

x