Live.the.dream

Hi everyone,

This is my first time visiting this site and my first post!

I hope I'm putting this in the right forum, I wasn't sure.

Here goes, my husband and I dream of relocating our young family to Perth in Western Australia in the next few years. My husband is 32, I'm 29 and our daughters are 3 months and 22 months old.

It's been our dream for such a long time and only now that the UK economy (especially the banking industry) is falling apart have we really been starting to seriously look into it.

I work as a civil servant in the prison service and my husband is a Financial advisor. We know that neither of these jobs are on the skills list and so we want to try to find out if there is any possible way of getting out there? I think we could go out on a visa (I forget which one) if my husband was able to find an employer willing to sponsor him. What we're really struggling with is how on earth does he even begin to find an employer in Australia when he's over here?

Also ive heard of state sponsorship? What exactly is that and does anyone know if that would be an option for us?

I know that for so many people it will always just remain a dream because the reality is its very difficult to gain a visa. We're very aware that it will be even harder for us due to our job roles not being 'wanted', but we are also desperate to give it a try.

Please, if anyone reads this that has been in a similar situation (jobs not on skills list etc) please let me know how you went about emigrating!

Thank you do much for reading and thank you in advance for answering!

X

newjersey

Hi and welcome to BE. I suggest you start by skimming over the DIAC website, immi.gov.au and trying out the visa wizard. Though your only viable option lies in the skilled visa area, and for that you must have an occupation that is listed in the Skilled Occupation List.

An Australian employer can sponsor you for either temp worker 457 visa or a permanent a.k.a. Employer Nomination Scheme 121 visa. As of now the occupation lists are separate, but if occupation is only listed for the temp sponsorship, you'd be running a risk of having to go back home if your employment ends and you are unable to find another sponsor to pick it up. In your situation, family and all, I wouldn't personally take the risk with the temp visa.

Try trawling seek.com.au, to get a feel of what the market is like for Financial Advisory, what the wages are - could also try reviews on mycareer.com.au - to help you see if given successful visa application you'd be comfortable financially. Try to do as much research as possible, for the area, cost of living, etc.

Hope this gets you started, please come back if you have more questions.

PS> state sponsorship is a way to gain points, if you are short of the threshold, in exchange for living in the state for two years. Each state sponsors only a limited amount of occupations and has quotas for the number of applications for each one. Just FYI, you need to establish if you are eligible in principal (not everyone is) and take it from there.

Live.the.dream

Thank you newjersey.

We've been on the DIAC website and done the visa wizard, it came out showing a Skilled - Independent (Migrant) (subclass 175) visa? We used my husbands details.

We've also looked through seek.com to see what sort of opportunities there are out there and in Western Australia specifically. My husband is happy with the jobs and salaries etc and we've researched into rental costs of homes etc out there do we have a rough idea of what sort of cost of living expenses we could expect. We also have a friend who lives and works in Perth and she's been very helpful in filling in the blanks as it were with costs etc and the realities of living out there.

The only problem with seek.com is that all of the jobs seem to be advertised via employment agencies and after contacting a few it seems they don't accept applications from foreign nationals looking for employer sponsorships. My husband was advised to contact employers directly. He sent emails off to a few of the main banks in Australia but just seemed to get automatically generated messages back directing him to their careers page where you just apply for jobs etc. obviously what he wants is to know how to go about gaining sponsorship. Like does he just apply to a company and wait and see?

It's just a mine field to us, starting it all off is so daunting and all the abbreviations and different lists etc to look through are getting us totally confused!

There's an event coming up at the end of this month up in birmingham which is all about emigrating to Oz and I wonder if it might be worth going along.

Thank you again though for your help and your kind welcome!

mrsgreenstar76

Funnily enough, my husband is a civil servant in HMPS too. Small world. Depending on what you do & your qualifications etc, you could try going for Policy Analyst (224412) or Policy & Planning Manager (132411) - we went for the latter option as it suited his qualifications/experience best. It's on SOL schedule two, so you'd need a state sponsor (so you wouldn't be able go for an independent visa). Luckily, Policy & Planning Manager is on the Western Australia State Migration Plan. Obviously you'll need to keep a look out for the changes from the 1st July. If they remove the occupation from the SOL, then you'll need to have a rethink!

Live.the.dream

Thank you for replying, unfortunately my job role only entails administration work processing parole applications and release on temporary licence applications from prisoners. Plus I only work part time 18.5hrs a week.

I think if we're able to go using anyone's qualifications/job etc then it'll be my husbands. It's just so difficult trying to go about finding Australian employers from over here.

newjersey

you are right about the recruiters, they dominate the job boards and seem to be not interested in anything that is not a slam dunk case. Going direct after employers would be your better option IMO, but as you say they hide behind either corporate recruiters (same breed, but in-house) or those web pages you mention. Perhaps if you tried social media websites, such as linked in or something similar, would that be of any help I wonder.

re. events, I have never been to one, but most of what I read on BE is that they are much to broad and generic, the way they present information to the audience. You are probably past that point by having had read the immi site.

Also note that in July the visa rules do change, and most noticeable change is introduction of Expression of Interest followed by the invitation to apply, sort of ranking system. One other important thing that change is the slew of skill lists for various visas that will hopefully be merged into one. Some occupations may be taken off, some hopefully added.

You always can try to see if you can also fit your job responsibilities (not the title, they could care less about the title) into some other occupations as well, what DIAC refers to as "closely related" - they give more or less detailed descriptions in here - immi.gov.au/asri - may help if something "closely related" is on the list when your primary occupation isn't. Still need to pass the skills assessment though.

Live.the.dream

Newjersey, thank you again. I hadn't even thought of social network sites so I'll give that a try!

I had thought that about the events, that they'd be too generalised and we probably wouldnt find out anything we hadn't already learnt online.

I had noticed that all the rules are set for change in a couple of months. What exactly is the Expression of interest, and invitation to apply etc and how would that affect us?

As for the whole job responsibilities rather than job titles, I had no idea that that is what they're interested in. I will definitely look into that!

Sorry, asking all these questions just makes me realise how totally naive and unprepared we are in all of this

Thank you for being patient and for helping me!

mrsgreenstar76

Basically, with the EoI, once you've made sure that you meet the eligibility for the visa that you want to go for, you would lodge your expression of interest. It's so that you can show DIAC that you would like to be considered for a visa. Here's what DIAC say about it:

The submitted EoI(s) are ranked, and DIAC will select people to invite to make an application. When selected, then you would lodge the actual visa application.

Unless you've already had your skills assessed & taken IELTS (if necessary), then you're not going to have time to get them done before the 1st July. So this will be the system in place when you're ready to apply.