Originally Posted by evets

WOW OP you are not taking the feedback well. Are you expecting to come to Australia on a 1 possibly 2 year WHV and find you land on your feet. You should not be so reactive to the posts, you are asking people for advice who actually life and work here and can provide assistance.

The WHV is about visiting a new country and experiencing lifestyle and culture, due to the 6 month limit it makes it difficult for potential employers to hire you as they know you will not be long term.

If you are so focused on your career and have a good job, your best bet stay with it and stay in the UK.

If you are willing to step outside your comfort zone, and maybe find an employer that would sponsor you in Australia, then take the chance. It can and does happen.

It appears to me you do not want to do this as you think the WHV will land you a permanent job.

From reading numerous posts on this forum and other expat forums, plenty of people take the risk in the hope of a better/different lifestyle. Some succeed, some fail.

As other posts I have read teaching jobs are hard to secure, especially being a new immigrant. The job market is quite tough in Australia at the moment and not only for teaching jobs, it appears to be all over.

Maybe re-evaluate your situation, could you take a year out and come back to the UK and still get back on the ladder!

Originally Posted by NickyC

There were actually three amnesties where illegal or temporary residents were forgiven and granted permanent residency visas.

The first was in 1976 but relatively few people took it up. The second was in 1980. I was granted PR via that amnesty - not that I was here illegally, I had an extended WHV and wanted to stay longer - and there was another, supposedly final, amnesty in 1983.

As you say, there's never been one since, though Bob Hawke did grant thousands of PR visas en masse to the Chinese students who were in Australia at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.

I knew a guy who lived and worked here illegally for around 7 years. He was waiting for another amnesty. Gave up waiting eventually and returned to the UK. I often wonder what they said to him on the way out..

Originally Posted by Amazulu

Fair enough. It was probably different when I did it back in the '90s. A friend spent a year (this was in the '00s) at one company on a WHV and he is now a citizen

I actually worked here illegally for 6 months during my backpacker days - no employer checked my visa. When I did our PR application, I told them about this episode and there was no comeback at all

Originally Posted by spouse of scouse

My husband's 21 year old nephew (little shit that he is) came over a couple of years ago on a WHV. He wanted to stay for 2 years, so I had quite a few talks with him about what he needed to do and where he needed to do it to get the second year.

After 6 months of enjoying our hospitality, he nicked off to Melbourne and didn't keep in touch. Found out recently that he didn't do his 3 months in a designated rural area - instead he used the rural work details of someone else (who I suspect sold them to him), and got his second year that way.

I'm pleased to say that DIBP caught up with him very quickly, and turfed him.