info on skilled immigration visa

lampk
New Member



Joined: 25 Aug 2008
Posts: 3
Location: alberta

Posted: Wed Sep 03, 2008 10:58 am

 

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My wife is interested in working in Australia under a skilled immigration visa,she is a registered dietitian in Canada.When we contacted the Australian Embassy we were told the visa could take 12-15 months to processes?Is this normal?is there anyway to speed this process up ?

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comet555
Super Member



Joined: 28 Jun 2007
Posts: 197
Location: Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Posted: Wed Sep 03, 2008 5:31 pm

 

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It could take that long, but I'd say generally it's quicker if you know what you're doing when you apply and most importantly if your job is on the demand list. There's lots of factors involved so it could take 6-18 months depending.

http://www.immi.gov.au/skilled/general-skilled-...ons-in-demand.htm

I couldn't directly see dietician on the list, so I don't think that job is on the demand list. SO my guess is you could be looking at up to a year.

We applied for ours in 2006 and our took about 6 months to process. It was actually quite quick, but it did help that my husband is a mining engineer and that was on the MODL (demand list).

You can help speed things up a bit by getting your medicals and police checks done a bit early. Not neccessarily when your application goes in, but a month or two before you a expect a case officer. That way when you get a case officer your application is sitting there complete and there's not much for them to do except grant yout he visa.

There's two website you can follow to see how quick other people are getting their visas. They are not associated with immigration Australia in any way, they are just people keeping track of their own info to see what's going on.

http://www.beupdate.co.uk/indexvisa.php
http://www.austimeline.com/

Here's a link for our timeline:
http://www.austimeline.com/aus/displayApp.jsp?id=3690

Unfortunatley there really is no way to speed up the process. Thankfully you are from Canada which is a low risk country so yours would be granted faster than someone from say India (which could take 2 years).

If you're in a huge hurry then you could try to get an employer sponsored visa (temp 457). But it's only temporary so it has lots of restrictions. If you qualify for the permanent visa (175) then I would definitely go for that. It's worth the wait.

Remember you also need to have a positive skills assessment before you even apply for the visa. So I'd start on that.

For more immigation advice or on Australia in general, here's a great site.
http://britishexpats.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=32

There's mostly people from the UK on there but you'll find people from all over the world as well. There's a couple of us Canadians on there and you'll find someone called Dorothy who is really helpful.

Good Luck,

Haley

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lampk
New Member



Joined: 25 Aug 2008
Posts: 3
Location: alberta

Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2008 6:29 am

 

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thanks for the info Haley!

We did a the skilled immigration assessment form and she scored 125,although i could not see dietitian on the MODL list her job is in demand and does score a 60 on the SOL form 1121i,we did a quick job search and found more than 60
jobs for her position on the web.We have made contact with the Dietitians of Australia and will be sending copies of her degree and internship, as well as her licence to practice in Canada.A question i have to ask is it worth while to invest in a company that specializes in visa applications?Does it make the process easier and quicker?
we were hoping the process would take 6-12 months ,is this realistic?
once again thanks for your time!
kevin

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comet555
Super Member



Joined: 28 Jun 2007
Posts: 197
Location: Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2008 1:52 pm

 

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If you're going to apply for your own skilled 175 visa (the permanent one) then you don't really need anything from a company. Even having a job offer won't speed things up. The visa will just come in its own time. I dothinkthat 6-12 months is realistic for a permanent visa. If you're lucky it could be on the lower end of the scale, if not it might take a bit longer. I don't see it taking longer than a year though.

If you're truly impatient then you could go out on a temp 457 visa. Then it would matter what employer you find. Generally speaking it is difficult to get sponsored, although it could happen. We tried that ourselves with no luck. It's certainly worth a try if you're in a hurry. I would still apply for your own skilled 175 visa, and then if you found a sponsor you could move out sooner than expected. Then eventually your 175 visa would be granted, which if you're in Australia might mean you have to make a quick trip out of the country and back to get your visas (the 175 can't be granted while in Australia).

Not sure of the one question. are you asking me if you should use a migration agent to help with your application? It's really up to you, it depends on lots of factors. If you like doing research, paperwork and have a relatively straight forward case then I don't think you should need an agent.

If you have a complicated case (medical problems, custody issues, work issues) or you just want the security of knowing it was done properly then you might want an agent. If you check out the British Expats site you'll find that Alan Collet & George Lombard come highly recommended.

Personally I think if you're prepared to put a bit of work into it then you could do it yourself. A lot of people don't realize that you're still the one to fill out all the forms yourself (agent or not). An agent is there to answer questions and to look it over before it's sent off. That's pretty much it.

Using a migration agent definitely does not speed things up. I don't believe their applications get processed any faster. If there's a hang up or problem with your application then they might be able to get things moving a bit quicker though, but really no difference. In some case it might take longer because once you've filled out your application it goes to the agent to look over, then if your agent sucks it could sit there a while before they get to it and send it off.

We did our application by ourselves. First I downloaded all the forms and figured out if there were any areas I wasn't sure of. It looked like something we could do ourselves so that's what we did. I just downloaded all the forms and printed them out. Then I went through it in pencil and filled in everything I could. I put flags on everything I wasn't sure of. A little research on the web answered all of my questions so it was pretty easy. Once I was sure I had it all down I did it again in pen. Checked over ever single box on at least 3 separate occassions and when I was sure I hadn't screwed anything up it got sent off.

Now, you can do it online which I believe helps speed things up a bit. But I would suggest just printed off the forms and filling them out in pencil first to see what you think. I would also download Booklet 6 because it gives information on how to fill everything in. If you have any questions you can always ask me. We technically applied for a 136 visa, but that was changed recently into the 175. So it's still pretty much the same except the points changed a bit.

Anyway, if you have any more questions feel free to ask. I would recommend holding off on the medicals and police checks for at least a couple of months. When your visa is granted you have a year from whichever one you did earliest to validate your visa (this means visit Australia. not move there). So if you can hold off doing the medicals and police checks then you have a bit more time to validate your visa once its granted. I would however check and see how long the waiting list is to get to a panel doctor in your area (see immigration website to find a doctor) and also find out how long the police check would take. That way you can factor in the wait to figure out when to do them. For ours we did them about 1-2 months before we expected a case officer, so about 4 or 5 months in. My theory was that I wanted it to show up in my file pretty close to the time it would be given to someone, so that they would just pull my file and go oooohhh a complete file. It must have worked because it was granted in 6 months at the beginning of Dec. A lot of people who applied at the same time as me ended up waiting until after Christmas or longer. Could've just gotten lucky though!

Good luck,

Haley

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