How to get Permanent Residency in Australia

How to apply for permanent residency in Australia

Here is a summary of our way to permanent residency in Australia. We chose the “Skilled Independent” way to PR. There are other types of visas as well, but this one suited us best.

To apply for a skilled independent PR visa, one needs to pass a points test. Points are given for age, education, work experience, spouse skills, English knowledge, plus bonus points for wealth, other language skills and if you have an occupation in demand. If all this adds up to 115 points (currently, this changes over time), your health is ok, and you have no crime convictions, then you pass and get the visa stamp in your passport.

First you have your skills assessed by an assessment agency. Where you send it, depends on your education or trade experience.

After a successful assessment, you send in the main application to the Australian immigration department (DIMIA).

1997/98

My first contact with the Australian embassy to see what the requirements were for migration. At that time all applications were to be sent to the Stockholm Embassy, who handled the PR visa procedure themselves.

After reading through the papers I found that I’d need to wait for more work experience in order to clear the pass mark. My experience up to that point was a mix of sales and marketing, not three years in the same field. So the application was put on hold.

No new attempts were made. The pass mark was raised from 95 to 105, as far as I can remember.

1999

Now all applications were to be sent to the Bonn embassy, not to Stockholm. Also, a new points test system was introduced, where one first had skills assessed and then applied for PR. Before all was done in the same application.

As my wife is a nurse, and nurses were in great demand, we figured she would easily gain the required points, especially if I received 5 point as a spouse having my skills assessed.

So, the process began.

	· All vital documents were translated into English by Mr Perry Hadley, a certified translator in Lund. (SEK 2000).
	In August we both did our IELTS tests at the British Council in Copenhagen (DKK 1125 each). We tried the academic version (requirement for Maria as a nurse and just for fun for me). I scored a 9 overall and Maria 7.5.	·
	All our diplomas, passport copies, birth certificates, work experience records, military service records, etc. were certified (two copies each, one for the assessment and one for the final application) by the Australian Consul in Copenhagen for the cheap sum of 120 DKK. He was a little awed by the amount of documents needed for applying, and it ended with him sending everything to us by recommended mail, instead of us having to wait for hours for him to get through it all.	·
	Maria sent her documents to ANCI (AUD 500) to be assessed as a nurse and I sent mine to Vetassess (AUD 350) for assessment as a Business and Information Professional.	·

· After about 8 weeks the results arrived. I was accepted by Vetassess. For Maria to be accepted as a nurse by ANCI she’d need to complete a bridging course in Australia. It doesn’t matter that Swedish nurses have higher qualifications than Australian ones, so are the rules if you’re not from a Commonwealth country. Regardless of the nurse shortage, they still have this stupid catch 22 system (Maria can’t receive a PR visa before you pass a bridging course and she can’t do the course before she receives a PR visa)

So, we were stuck again. I would receive 50 points for my skills, but Maria 0 points unless she did a bridging course in Australia before applying (not even 5 points for spouse skills either). This was not practical for her, just going to Australia and do a bridging course for a year. Added together, we would not pass the points test without Maria’s points as a nurse. We’d be 5 points short.

So, applying as a Business and Information Professional or as a nurse was out of the question.

2000

As I had been working as an IT Consultant since January 1998, I began to look into the option of using this as an alternative approach. However I would need more work experience, according to the ACS (Australian Computing Society) demands. With a minor in IT and four years work experience, it should be ok.

2001

In April I decided to take a chance with ACS and see if, apart from my 3 ½ years as an IT Consultant, they would take into account my other work experience (IT Technician, Sales and Marketing within IT) as a part of the four years work experience demand.

I sent in my application and paid the AUD 350 fee. Two months later I received the result. I was deemed to have an IT minor but lacking in work experience. I needed to work one more year.

2002

June. So, now four years work experience in the bag. Should we try again or forget all about it? As we’ve already invested so much time and money, it would be a shame not to proceed. A new application to ACS (AUD 350 again) and this time it was successful, so the way was now open for a PR application with a positive outcome.

Or so I thought… The pass mark had been raised to 115 (I would get 120, so that would be ok). But in the misc.immigration.aus+nz newsgroup a discussion had begun in regard to DIMIA’s handling of work experience. According to some rumours, if the demand for a successful assessment (as mine by ACS) was 4 years work experience then those 4 years wouldn’t count in order to satisfy the demands for gaining 10 points for work experience in the points test. If this was true, I would have to wait three more years before being able to apply (and loosing 5 points for turning 35 in the process). Rather depressing to say the least… Somewhere it seemed that Australia didn’t want us to migrate or it was a sign from above telling us to give up the whole idea.

However, Mr George Lombard, a migration agent who seems to know his business, assured me that in my case there shouldn’t be a problem with this, so in trust we continued the process. As I turn 35 in October and then loose 5 points for age, speed was essential. Before mid September everything had to be sent away.

	· If one can prove fluency in Swedish, 5 points will be awarded for speaking a minority language. To prove this I requested a certificate from my former university in Växjö that the instruction language for my Masters degree was in Swedish. Also, to hopefully avoid having to do another IELTS test (they only have one year validity), they certified that during my academic semester as an exchange student in Holland, the tuition was in English, meaning I at least have adequate English skills for academic studies.
	August: From the Swedish Tax Authority (folkbokföringen) we ordered an English extract of everything in the population registry for me, my wife and Julian, our son. We asked them to sign each copy and send two copies of each, which they did. Now we could send the original documents and not have to certify copies of them. The extract mentions everything DIMIA requests (we hope) in regards to personal ID (date and place of birth, parents names, current residency, civil status, name of wife/husband, children, etc).	·
	August: More documents to be certified. This time by the British Consul in Malmö.	·
	Passport photos to be taken. Four of each applicant.	·
	Our second son was born August 22^nd . We pondered a bit whether to wait for all his papers to be registered by the Tax Authorities or to send them later. We decided to send them in later, as not to loose five points for my turning 35, but include some pictures of him in the application (how good pictures one can get of a two week old baby).	·
	September 12. The last bunch of documents have been signed by the British Consul here in Malmö.
	September 13. The application sent to AdelaideSkilled Processing Center (ASPC) by Express mail. Letter weight 453 g, 27 appendixes. See a list of them here.
	September 23. Application has arrived. Now it's about one year of waiting.
	November. Nicholas population registry papers, a few mailing labels and a new certificate of employment sent to Adelaide.

       2003

      April 22. A request for medicals, police checks, original IELTS scores and a certified copy of Nicholas birth certificate. We're getting close...
May 20. Our medicals have been done, Police checks arrived and all has been mailed and delivered by DHL to the ASPC.

June 10. In response to an email question, our Case Officer informed us that she'd granted our visas today!!!! :-D

June 20. Our passports were sent to the Australian Embassy in Berlin to have our visas entered into them.

June 26. The passports were returned, the PR visas are glued into them and we're free to enter and live in Australia as we please.... First entry must be before May 2004, and we must move before May 2008.

So, finally everything turned out for us. Now it's up to us and the circumstances around to see if we will move there or not. Only time will tell.

2004

Feb. A visa validation trip to Australia (Perth & Adelaide) with stop in Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur & Langkawi). A great holiday and two nice cities visited. If Adelaide had more IT jobs, we wouldn't mind settling there, but Perth is probably the best bet, even though it's location is a bit off.

       2005

      May. The house is sold, new owners will move in October 27
June. Tickets booked. One way with Thai, stopver in Bangkok, arriving in Perth November 5

June. Booked accomodation with Poms in Perth. They didn't have the same house for 6 weeks so we had to take two houses, one in Beldon & one in Butler

August. IBM grated me a leave of absense for one year, just in case we decide to return to Sweden if things don't work out in Perth.

September. Time to start selling of the stuff we don't need, especially the cars. Can be tough, there are loads of cars on the market.

Useful resources for more information are:

http://www.immi.gov.au . The Australian department of Immigration. Lots of info and documents you might need.They publish a booklet that tells you all you need to know about skilled independent migration (form 1119). Read it and learn... ;-)

news://misc.immigration.aus+nz (also available on http://www.britishexpats.com forums immigration)The Usenet newsgroup is great for tips and info regarding the move to Australia. It’s very UK influenced(lots of Pommies moving to Aus), but useful anyway.

http://www.austimeline.comHere you can see the average processing times for skills assessments and applications.

http://www.aussiemove.com/ has some info on housing prices and settlement.

http://www.gomatilda.com/ Various migration info and tips.

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