Lisa's Blog

Are you a potential skilled migrant for Australia? From 01 July this year, Tasmania - Australia's island state, has introduced a new visa category for overseas applicants.  You can live and work in Tasmania for up to four years on the Skilled Regional Provisional Visa Subclass 489 with a possible pathway to Permanent Residence. Call us to discuss your visa options - we're happy to talk with you, without obligation.  Read More

We are delighted that Neal has achieved Australian Citizenship - it couldn't have happened to a nicer person...  Read More

What a turbulent week it has been in Migration. We've seen many industry bodies, newspaper articles and websites offering explanations and definitive answers but we would caution people against making any hurried decisions because the situation is still evolving.   Read More

The Subclass 457 Visa will be abolished and replaced with the new Temporary Skill Shortage Visa (TSSV). The new visa will include mandatory criminal checks and tighter language requirements. It will comprise two streams - short term and medium term. The short term visas will be issued for two years whilst medium term visas will be issued only for more critical skill shortages and for up to four years. Both streams will include mandatory labour market testing with limited exceptions and other assessment criteria.   Read More

The Departmental time to process both the Subclass 820 and 801 visas has seen a push out to 12 - 18 months, for each section. They say patience is a virtue...  Read More

A recently released Consolidated Skilled Occupations List is now available. (Also contains Skilled Occupations List.) To read the list, click here   Read More

The Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Peter Dutton, has indicated the Government will cut some occupations from the Skilled Occupations List (SOL).  Read More

The Immigration Department is looking at reducing the amount of time you have to find another sponsor once you cease working with your current employer. You will have 60 days to find a new sponsor, instead of current period of 90 days. Note: assuming of course that your 457 visa is itself, not due to expire.  Read More

It is interesting to note that not only is the Department of Immigration and Border Patrol taking longer to process visa applications these days, but their statistics released this week, on the time take to process Citizenship applications is averaging up to 251 days - although to be fair they have received over 46000 applications this year! It's fabulous that people are making the commitment to become Australian.  Read More