Thinking of emigrating
 

Hi all,

My husband and I are thinking of moving to Australia, we have 3 kids, he is an electrician, I am currently in my final year of a nursing degree, so the move would probable be within the next 2 years.
We are house swapping with our friends in brisbane next year for a month and hope to gain an insight into life down under, but as I am sure many of you understand we are quite anxious and very confused about the whole process...especially uprroting kids and leaving loved ones behind.

Can anyone offer any insight into the visa process, what checks are carried out etc and also (mainly) credit checks as we had some difficulty with repayment last year, no ccj's or defaults, just missed payments-will this impact our application?

I am very gratefil for any advice offered!

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

Check what visas you can apply for. As you will be newly qualified your husband may be main applicant, there's loads to look at. Also UK credit rating good or bad has no standing in OZ..

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

Thanks Tramps_mate, thats good to know re the credit rating, the more serious we get about this move the more worried I get that something will stand in our way!

We are going to an emigration road show this weekend, I'm sure we will get a lot of questions answered there, but glad I found this website, I can do some homework before I go!

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

Was same for me, I expected something to crop up and ruin it, but it didn't and I start work out there on the 12th March!

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

Hi roberta,

Im in the same position as you, my partner is a bricklayer and we are fancying melbourne!! We have 2 youngs one. I have family in melbourne so OH is planning on going out this yr to stay with relatives and see what its like as we have no clue. Im hoping to join him for a few wks. My partner has already applied for visa and been accepted and I will get in through him. Where do you currently live as my partner is attending a roadshow this wkend in glasgow but im unable to attend as im working!! Did your friends in brisbane emigrate? Thats great that they are going to do a house swap!!

Lynsey

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

I think we get these feeling because we want it so badly!

Lynsey, we live in Motherwell, we too are going to the roadshow in Glasgow! I have looked into the visa options, there is so much information I don't know where to start!

Our friends emigrated 4 years ago and apart from missing family and friends I don't think they have ever looked back! They are coming over next year for a family wedding and we were actually going to disneyland (big holiday to celebrate graduation), but this opportunity came up and is just too good to let go, especially since we have been thinking about mocing for a while.

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

Well done Tramps_mate...very exciting news, congratulations on your new job-and your new life :)

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

For the visa process you need to check out www.immi.gov.au
Credit checks aren't generally needed, unless possibly if you are going for a business visa of some kind :)

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

wish we could swap lives, i'll live in Motherwell and your very welcome to melbourne:)








been here 5 years , never really settled!, I would advise everyone to have a plan B,..........just incase of unforeseen circumstances and feelings.
We came on a permanent residency visa as i was a nurse, but if i remember correctly you have to have 2 years qualified experience, so as someone said you would probably have to come on your husbands trade. Once here you would probably be looking for a 'post-grad nursing position'.
Goodluck:)

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

[QUOTE=roberta1980;9888395]Hi all,

.
We are house swapping with our friends in brisbane next year for a month.

Fantastic idea, try to do it longer if poss to help you more with the whole process:)although i can see this might not be practical:)

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

We spoke to some visa experts on sunday at an emigration roadshow and 1 years postgrad experience is required, which in all honesty I would rather get before I went over, so we will be looking to maybe apply in about a year to 18 months time!

Margaret, why do you prefer Motherwell to Melbourne? Is it pesonal reasons or generally being away from 'home' ? We are working on a backup plan, I am currently on a career break to complete a nursing degree and may exercise this option again to try Australia. I do find it a little daunting-leaving family, selling our home etc!

Thankyou for your feedback it is very helpful!

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

Many reasons, but mostly the being away from home,and my god i miss the people and their ways, also the education system sucks here!, but if you can afford private shooling then its not really a problem (we can't), so we opted to look at the best state schools and live and rent there. We took a huge financial hit (as everyone does!), and believe it when you read it is an extremely expensive place to live, at present we still cannot afford to buy (5 years on). Think i was just too old (emigrated at 43), too stuck in my ways so to speak. As for plan B, never crossed my mind really , went with the stupid attitude 'we can always come back', but things are never that simple.
I think Melbourne is an amazing place, and there is lots of opportunities, I have no real gripes with australia (ok i do, but read posts on here for gripes, am usually agreeing:lol)

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

hey roberta
have been living in mandurah wa for 7 years i am also a bricklayer but finally had enough from dec to march its so hot for laying bricks up at 4.am finished for 2.30 .winter more rainfall in a day than uk gets in a week and wind that blows work down .
melbourne is the best for work like this do not even consider queensland or nsw ,adelaide also a bit kinder for laying bricks and properties cheaper my cousin gets 240 bucks a day day work rate in adelaide and loves it.

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

Margaret, thankyou for a very realistic reply! I have to say that I have the same attitude you had: 'we can always come back', but in reality we will have to use a chunk of our equity, so there may be other implications arising with that....lots to think about! Do you enjoy nursing in Oz? How is it in comparison to the UK?

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

Hey Jeppy,

My husband is an electrician, we enquired about WA but the general advice was that most of the work is away from home and overnight because (as you say) it is too hot during the day, so I think realistically we would be looking at East coast. Why stay away from queensland etc? Is it due to the heat or lack of work/property? We hope to get about next year a bit when e are over there, so hopefully we get a better idea od life down under.

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

This is one of the issue I had with the lastest (only series that I've seen) of Wanted Down Under. The take people over in the Australian winter and particularly for the people that will work outdoors, the sentiment is along the lines of:

'This is wonderful, it's winter and I can still work outside/wear a t-shirt'(insert shot of family doing something they 'couldn't' do in a UK winter).

But I watch it and think 'there's another side to that coin in summer if you work outside, shove that'!:blink:

Disclaimer: I am a namby pamby southern shandy drinking softy who works in an office, both in Sydney and the UK.:D But I cycle and run a lot and that's by choice, so I do know the heat takes its toll on my performance.

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

hey roberta sorry the thread was in reply to ice geordie as her other half is a bricklayer but would also apply to you guys.
brisbane is beautiful but is so bloody humid and feels just as hot if not hotter than wa! just trying to play a game of football outside for an hour from nov til april is hard work.

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

My hubby is a HV electrician, so the vast majority of his work is outside. No work gets stopped on account of the heat. His last job up north had a couple of 45C days (plus humidity) and they're still working. His company (and the mine) wouldn't be too impressed flying workers up, shutting down part of the facilities, and then having the workers say, "Hey, it's over 40C, too hot to work."

Schools stay open too even on 43C days...that took a bit of getting used to as back in Canada, many schools tend to close on days of extreme cold.

I'd say with nursing and electrical that's in your favor, but more so if your hubby has industrial and HV experience. There's tons of regular domestic and commercial sparkies around, but still a demand for HV ones. They asked my hubby last week if any of his Canadian friends with HV skills and cable jointing experience would be interested in coming over. They're looking far and wide it seems.

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

Plan B should definitely include, what if one of you settles and the other doesnt, what if kids settle and one of you or both dont:)
What if the kids definitely don't settle .:huh:

Re;nursing, i find i have to work twice as hard and longer hours, due to high cost of living and shortage of staff and also because nursing assistants are a big no, no here. But I count myself lucky that i have a job, lots of peeps come and struggle to get work, also at least in my job i have made some lovely friends.

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

Same here now hun. Staff not being replaced, redundancies etc.
Worry about "any qualified provider" taking over the running of services.
Long hours, some unpaid just to get the work done.
We were told recently by a senior manager that we were the lucky ones as we have jobs!

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

Yes the situation here is dire! as a student I should be supernumary, but find I also stay beyond my hours and miss out on learning experiences to help out on the floor. Not complaining, but supernumary should be supernumary. I am one of the lucky ones as I took a career break and should be offered a RGN post when I register, but there are 100 student nurses due to qualify in Jan 13 and literally no jobs.

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

Sounds so bad there, i remember the thing that fascinated me the most was the fact you were paid for overtime here and not 'time-back'.
Not sure what the statistics are but i know there are alot of newly qualified nurses here not getting jobs (which is one of the anf gripes just now), and i think its in the thousands, i am not meaning to scare you, but i believe this to be the truth. Look on anf website (Australian nurses federation) and EBA (enterprise bargaining agreement) for more details. There is a nurses dispute about this and other issues going on just now. I am talking in Victoria only.

However i work in the operating theatre and i swear i could work 24 hrs 7 days a week if i wanted:ohmy:

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

We have just had 500 from one university in Brisbane (there are several)....one hospital had 25 places for graduates....no different here

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

Whats going on, why are there no jobs just now:confused: I know that the nurses in Victoria are fearing nursing assistants (cant remember what its called here, HBA or summit) are taking their jobs. We were one of the hosps that piloted nursing assistants, and it was very positive, but petition round last week to stop this. I have no beef with it as i was very well used to working with fantastic nursing assistants, but does make you wonder for the long term, it probably contributes to the fact i would never get a job back in Scotland now.

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

Budgets

There are jobs but is is cheaper and easier for hospitals to recruit qualified nurses than train graduates.

There are also a lot of people looking for work.

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

All the nurses arriving from the UK can't be helping!

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

Probably a lot less than there were

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

This is very true and is an ongoing argument universally for all career choices. So it would appear to be more beneficial to ensure I have gained a full years post-grad experience (at least) before applying ? I wasn't aware of no nursing assistants in Oz and actually couldn't imagine a nurses role without them, over here assistants are trained to a high level .My own post was in wound management and venepuncture and in the ER they are very skilled, so budget wise this would make sense.

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

Nursing assistants are one of the things i really, really miss in my job, but the nurses here are very wary of the govt and this issue (especially as the govt in victoria are trying to do away with nurse/patient ratio and bring in split shifts:ohmy:) I find the nurses union here much more militant that in the u.k,........... i quite enjoy that really:lol:

Nursing assistant worked fantastic in scotland but i admit i am wary of it here, having already met many, many qualified registered nurses who's english is extremely poor, infact contributed to a cock up in our dept a few months ago.

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

Get the experience and then apply for an independent visa. If you want to work in a major city (and most nurses here do) then sponsorship will not be the best option unless you are very lucky

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

Another issue here is the number of nurses putting off retirement due to Superannuation shortfall and cost of living.

There are an awful lot of old nurses still working.

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

ehhhhhh Grayling is speaking sensibly.......god whatever next:lol:

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

I feel like methuselah in our dept, not many there , believe me they are mostly young , sassy nurses, i long for over 40 year olds:D

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

Sounds like there are a lot of changes on the horizon for nurses in Australia! Thanks for the websites Margaret, I will have a look.

Doing away with nurse/patient ratio? What is the minimal staffing level? Surely this will impinge patient safety? and split shifts...ouch!!!:unsure: Staffing levels here are poor and bank/agency staff are sometimes a fight to get. There aren't many jobs advertised on nhs show (if any at all), the outlook is grim :(

Grayling, thankyou for the advice, unsure which route we will take at the moment. We have a lot of older nurses here too, some have been 'asked' to take early retirement packages, but these jobs are not being replaced, they are lost.

Re: Thinking of emigrating
 

You do need at least 2 years experience in order to get a sponsored visa. You'd probably be better trying to get sponsorship based on your husbands trade. After 6months to a year (depending on where you're going in Aus - Brisbane it's 6months) you can do Agency work which is helpful when you're moving your whole family across the ocean as you have the flexibility to work as much or as little as you want. Plus you'll get to figure out which facilities you like working in and you'll get to know staff and hear of vacancies that they have going.