For those that understand the title, have any of you done it? And/or any idea how long the whole process takes - assuming no hiccups?

TIA

Andrew

Not yet but plan to in the next two years.

A 'plain sailing' ENS application can be very quick - if the requirements are clearly met and the application is professionally done.

Also assuming there are no health/character (eg police check from somewhere 'exotic')/child custody etc issues to contend with.

Be aware that a botched ENS application can very hard or impossible to fix. Get professional advice from an experienced agent *before* anything is sent to DIMIA.

Also be aware there may be new rules for ENS coming in from November. It's not clear whether things will be easier to harder (may be a mix of both) but the latter is likely if you're in Sydney. We don't know the details at this stage. You may not have any time to waste, however.

Jeremy

Doing this now...it's pretty easy - but my spouse is in a trade on the MODL list. Happy to take this offline by PM if you need any guidance.

Suffice to say we didn't need an agent. Total cost c$3000, but we are 4 people meaning more medicals, more police checks (for 3 countries).

Yes
The company paid for all the costs.. they lodged their bit, and we lodged ours, and paid our lodgement fees . We did not spend a penny, our company paid for it all. But we did our side of things ourselves.

The only hiccups we had is getting police checks from Britain - I had to phone Scotland yard, saying I can not send my passport to them ( they wanted a passport, original documents) .. the form for police checks from Britain seems designed for people in Britain.

Anyway, They agreed for us to send certified copies of things. They took their time about it too, and we went over the lodgement date here.. so I had to contact our case officer, and she understood this , so she gave us extra time to get the checks in.

Police checks from Singapore , I actually had to send fingerprints to the Sing police ( for RichS if he needs police checks from Sing) the police check form from sing requires your fingerprints ..your local police station here in Aus will take the prints for you if you ask them and explain. Australian police checks were easy enough - fill out the form, pay the fee.. and they were really quick.

The other thing we had do was get all our qualifications from the UK, we didn't have them on us here, as originally we came from Sing to Aus. and never took them out with us to Singapore in the first place.

We did it all ourselves, pretty straight forward, just a lot form filling that's all, and I don't think you need an agent at all - I didn't use one.

Time it took , I can't remember the exact time , it was definitely less than a year, a couple of months I think - 6 months maybe ( I can't remember - it was too long ago now when I did it ) . The only thing which held ours up were the police checks from the UK.

Just starting the process right now. Company insists on using an agent, which is fine by me, and he has been quite helpful, but I still have to do tons of chasing for info, and write ups of how essential I am for the job
They tell me processing times are about 3 months, unless it runs in to summer time, then may be as much as 5 months.

cheers
Jo

Hi All

Any clues at all on just what the "New Rules" for ENS could be, come this November ??

Cheers and thanks

Gwendo

Gwendo
I have sent that question to my agent but if you can shed any light on this Jeremy - it would be appreciated.

Andrew

Hi again

Would love a "bit more light" ..

Cheers
Gwendo

Some *possibilities* include:

- introduction of an 'occupations list' (which would probably be wider than the general skilled list)
- skills assessment to be done externally, like general skilled
- possible abolition of labour market testing
- minimum salary criteria
- special (ie, tougher) requirements for NSW

The last one about tougher requirements for NSW is more a 'probability'

There are no specific plans to introduce a points test, to the best of my knowledge.

Jeremy

Thanks for the reply Jeremy.

Cheers