Srdegnan

Hi all

My wife and I are currently looking into moving to Australia from the
UK (probably Sydney or Melbourne) under the independent skilled visa.
However my wife is also currently in the process of changing career ...
so would appreciate some advice ....

I'm currently 35 and shouldn't have an issue getting certified as an IT
Manager as I'm degree qualified and have a track record of doing this
for over 10 years.

So points wise ... looks like this

IT Manager: 60
Age: 20
English Lang: 20
Work exp: 10
MODL: 0
Aus qualify: 0
Spouse bonus: 5
Gov bond: 5 :-(

= 120 points.

So far, so good. However ... this is going on the basis that my wife's
historic professional experience was as an HR Manager.

For the last 6 months and the next 18, she is retraining as an
occupational therapist. Now the good news there is that OT is on the
MODL list.

However .... here's where the questions come in.

1. At the very least we can't move until my wife has qualified in 18
months. Any ideas on whether it would be better to submit an
application earlier with my wife's previous (HR) experience and if so
when?

2. An alternative would be to wait until my wife has qualified and run
with her as the lead applicant. Since she's a couple of years younger
than me, she gets 5 extra age points and 15 extra MODL points .... but
would she actually need 12 months experience to get the 15 MODL points?
That being the case would I then have to wait 30 months instead :-(

3. Once you have an application approved - how long is it valid for? Eg
... say we applied now, got approval in 9 months (Sep 2006) and I popped
over to Oz to get it stamped .... would I still be able to wait another
year before coming out?


Ideally I would like to make the move sooner rather than later.

Any ideas or pointers much appreciated ... I have done a fair bit of
digging around on the forums but this doesn't seem to have cropped up

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