Permanent residence refers to all people wishing to reside in Australia permanently and make it their primary country of residence. The migration programme for 2004-05 had 120,000 places available for migrants, with a strong focus on attracting skilled people and people who agree to live in regional areas of Australia. The government determines the level of the migration programme on an annual basis.
The Migration Programme
This is made up of:
Skill Migration Stream
Employer Sponsored Migration
The permanent employer sponsored migration schemes offer three
options for Australian employers to nominate skilled overseas staff to take up positions that cannot be filled from within the Australian labour market or through the employer’s own training programmes.
The Employer Nomination Scheme enables Australian employers to nominate highly skilled staff whose occupations are listed on an official list. Positions on the list are generally those requiring a three-year post secondary school qualification (ie a degree). The positions are to be full-time, available for a period of at least three years and offer a salary at least matching that shown on the list for the occupation.
Applicants are to be highly skilled and able to demonstrate their skill level in any one of three ways:
- by having their qualifications assessed by the relevant assessing body plus having three years of relevant post-qualification work experience
- has been nominated to fill a highly-paid, senior executive position
- or by having spent two years working in Australia on a 457 (or other stipulated temporary) visa, the last 12 months of which are to have been with the sponsoring employer.
The Regional Sponsored Migration Scheme (RSMS) enables regionally based employers to nominate overseas workers to fill positions located in regional Australia that cannot be filled from within the Australian labour market. Regional Australia is all of Australia except Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. Under the RSMS scheme, the sponsoring employer approaches an appointed regional body to obtain certification that the vacancy is genuine. An RSMS visa applicant is required to have a two-year diploma or higher qualification that is relevant to the appointment.
Applicants under the RSMS should normally be less than 45 years of age
and have functional English language skills. As with the ENS, there are provisions within RSMS for exceptional circumstances to be taken into account. Where a position is so unusual or highly specialised that the employer is unlikely to find anyone who meets the established criteria to fill the vacancy, exceptions to the age and English language requirements can be made. This will depend on the circumstances that the employer outlines to demonstrate the special skills required and difficulties experienced filling the position.
Labour Agreements are formal arrangements that enable Australian employers to recruit a specified number of workers from overseas in response to identified or emerging labour market or skill shortages. The skill level required for entry under a Labour Agreement is determined on an individual agreement basis and takes into account the specific needs of individual employers. Applicants are expected to have qualifications and experience that are suitable for the agreed position, and how that is determined can differ across occupations and industries.
There are other ways for people to enter the country, including via the Humanitarian Progamme which is in place mainly to help people in desperate need to leave their own country for safety reasons (ie refugees). However, most British workers enter Australia via the Migration Programme and in particular via the Skilled Migration stream.
Skilled Migrants For Permanent Residence
The skill stream of Australia’s migration programme targets people who are highly skilled, are under 45 years of age, and who will quickly make a contribution to the Australian economy. There are a number of categories in the Skill stream to enable successful business people and highly skilled and qualified personnel to migrate to Australia. These include:
View from Opera House, Sydney, NSW
Kanagaroo on the road out of Mungo National Park, NSW
Sunset, Broken Hill, NSW
Bunda Cliffs, Great Australian Bight, SA
Broken Hill Sculpture Symposium, The Living Desert Reserve, Broken Hill, NSW – Under the Jaguar Sun
Bottlenose Dolphin, Monkey Mia, WA
Hawksbill Turtle, Great Barrier Reef, OLD
Black Tip Reef Shark, Great Barrier Reef, OLD
Koala, Healesville Sanctuary, outskirts of Melbourne, VIC
Blowholes, Gasgoyne area (70km north of Carnarvon), WA
Uluru, Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, NT
Twelve Apostles, Port Campbell National Park, VIC
Eyre Highway, Nullarbor Plain, SA
Wineglass Bay, Freycinet National Park, TAS
Tamarama Beach, Sydney, NSW
- Skilled Independent: for people selected on the basis of their skills, age and English language ability.
- Regional/Skilled Migration: enables Australian state and territory governments and regional employers to nominate skilled migrants for entry on the basis of development objectives and identified skill needs. State/territory governments that choose to participate in the scheme conduct an audit to establish what skills are in short supply and in what locations.
- Skilled – Australian sponsored: people selected on the basis of their skills, age, English language ability and family relationship. In each case they must be sponsored by a relative already living in Australia. Special conditions apply for people whose sponsor lives in the Sydney metropolitan area or a ‘selected area’ in New South Wales as defined by postcode. See: www.immi.gov.au
There is another visa type available within the skilled migrant section (called Skilled-Designated Area Sponsored); however, this visa is not available to people migrating to large cities, so will not be discussed in any more detail.
www.immi.gov.au
Most British people seeking to migrate to Australia fall into the Skilled Independent visa type.
This category is for people who are under 45 years of age, and have skills, qualifications and employability that will contribute to the Australian economy.